Sandy Raynor
Horse Wrangler
Also participating in the conversation were Trish and Bex. This interview took place on set in New Zealand during the filming of “Endgame”
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 10
SD: One of the very first questions I was asked when the Xena Fan Club started was what was Argo’s real name. I was stumped. But I phoned Renaissance and within fifteen minutes they had the answer for me - Argo was played by Tully, and Honey and Mr. X were Tilly’s stunt doubles. That was three years ao.
Sandy: Tilly still plays Argo, Lucy’s riding horse. But Tilly’s stunt doubles are now Barbie and Mac. Mac’s a boy. Barbie looks the most like Tilly.
SD: Do you touch them up to look more like Tilly?
Sandy: Mac is a little bit of a lighter colored Palamino than Barbie is. So he gets a bath before he goes on set in potassium pomanganite and that gives him a bit more of an all over golden color.
SD (laughing): That’s the same thing they do to Lucy and Renee. Although they get a wash of tan makeup.
Sandy (laughing): Yeah.
SD (laughing): If Mac shows up this week with Mendhi designs, we’re gonna know someone was going along doing foot patterns on the actors and didn’t notice that one of them was a set of hooves!
Tilly is absolutely gorgeous. Some of the photos that Geoff Short, the Xena photographer, have taken of her and Xena are stunning. Where did she come from?
Sandy: She came from a riding school. She had been used by a young girl for pleasure riding.
SD: How old is she?
Sandy: She’s ten now.
SD: I was wondering how a horse gets into show business.
Sandy: In this case, the producer said he wanted a horse of a particular color. The previous head wrangler, Iain Horace Newton, and I went looking. There aren’t a lot of horses of that color in this country, so it wasn’t easy to find some to choose from. Especially when they need to have all the other qualifiers we need for filming. They’ve got to be extra quiet, a bit photogenic. Tilly’s a real human sort of horse. She’s very much a lady. She knows she’s a star. She really does. (laughing)
SD (laughing): How can you tell?
Sandy: Because she comes in and stands with this attitude. If you could see her doing it, you would know what I mean. She loves Lucy. They really bonded from the very first day. We tried out a few and she was the best one. She was a bit raggedy. She hadn’t had a cover on protecting her. She’d been looked after, but not as well as we do now. We took her and she’s been with us ever since.
SD: Lucy had a horse when she was a young girl. So you knew she could ride and liked horses.
Sandy: Yes.
SD: Are there little treats Tilly likes?
Sandy: Occasionally, if we need her to look in a certain direction, she gets tidbits. But our horses run more on love than bribery. (laughing) Sometimes there might be a bit of carrot - horse muesli.
SD: But no candy bars! Do the horses do many stunts?
Sandy: More so now. Barbie nods yes, counts with her foot, rears, kicks out with her back legs and she does liberty. That’s when she’s standing with someone away from me and I tell her to come to me and she’ll come and stop and rear, for instance.
SD: Without being on a lead?
Sandy: No harness at all. And we’ve only had Barbie about six months. She was a horse rescued off bad condition. One of our wranglers found her and brought her to us. So she’s really repaid us. She’s such a nice horse.
Mac - when you see Xena and Gabrielle together on Argo, that will be him. You don’t need a saddle or bridle to ride him. You can just use your voice or your knees. He’s also very good around explosions.
SD: He’s very calm?
Sandy: He’s totally used to them. Even Tilly has her own tricks. She sits down, lays down and bows.
SD: She did that in “The Greater Good.”
Sandy: She’s much better now than she was then. We were only just starting to work with her.
SD: Who’s the horse that jumped through the screen in “The Debt”?
Sandy: That was actually my own horse, Trigger.
(At this point we left the set and went over to a fenced in area where Tilly and some large black horses were grazing.)
Sandy (pointing to one of the black horses): This is Mr H.
SD: Goodness, he looks so regal.
Sandy: He was the horse the Berserker rode in “Adventures In The Sin Trade.”
(Tilly wanders over to where we’re talking and stands near the fence looking at us.)
Sandy: She’s very independent. She had her cover off this summer which we don’t usually do because we try to keep her color. But it’s just been so hot that we let her go in the paddock and left it off during her holiday. These horses work very hard and we make sure they get the right amount of time to just be horses. They have their own social lives. Pacific Renaissance has a total of eleven horses. We’re all quite proud to work for Pac Ren because they never question anything when it comes to the well-being of the horses. They get just the best care.
SD: A lot different from the old days of Hollywood.
Sandy: God, all those trip wires they used to use to make horses fall.
SD: Seeing old newsreel footage of the making of movies, it’s so hard to imagine that people could let that go on. Or even think of it in the first place.
Sandy: I can’t imagine working with horses and allowing that to happen to them.
(Tilly seems to be getting interested in the conversation and sticks her head over the fence to check me out.)
Sandy (giving voice to Tilly): “Have you got any presents for me?” (laughing)
(Tilly really is beautiful. She looks even better in real life than on the screen. With such dignity. She takes her time looking me over then turns and walks away.)
SD (ruefully): I didn’t have any presents.
Sandy: The horse Lucy rode in the rain in “Sin Trade” was called Panda.
SD: Two of my favorite episodes were “Debt” and “Sin Trade.”
Sandy/Bex: I’m glad you liked those two. They were the ones we were the most involved in. The most challenging. “The Debt” was the one that used a helicopter in the opening sequence where three groups of riders came charging over the hill and across the plain to engage each other in battle.
Bex: The horses rode down a hill onto the plain and a chopper came over the brow behind us. We were doing a fast canter and when the helicopter came over the hill, it was skimming the top of the tussock about three feet off the ground at eye level. We were chasing another group of horsemen in front of us and, as the chopper came over my shoulder, I could feel my headpiece and wig being lifted off and sucked up by the updraft caused by the rotors!
Sandy: The noise of the chopper, the charging of the horses - it was so exciting. And using the helicopter to carry the camera made for the most dramatic shots.
I think the horses behaved really, really well during that scene. By the end of the day, they didn’t seem to notice the chopper at all.
SD: Speaking of exciting, how about the various chariot races that have been done on the show?
Sandy: We’ve had lots of fun with the chariots on beaches. We’ve got two sets of chariot team horses. Blackie is our main one. He was bought for $200 on his way to the meat works. Now he’s quite a good riding horse as well. That’s one really lucky horse.
SD: Was it exciting when you found out you were going to be in a chariot race? It’s not something that happens too often nowadays. (laughing) Not much use of chariots in these modern times.
Sandy: It was terrifying. Because it’s two horses and they start racing each other when they’re side by side. It’s fun, however, when you go home from work and are asked what you’ve been doing. “Just galloping down to the beach in a chariot.” (laughing) We all feel really fortunate to be able to do what we do.