Stunt Coordinator Freddie Poole started out as a stuntman over thirty years ago on Walker: Texas Ranger. After a long career as the guy doubling for actors in dangerous scenes, Poole graduated to Stunt Coordinator in 2012 for the reboot of the legendary night time soap opera Dallas on TNT. Over the next few years, Poole would split his time between being a stunt performer (primarily for Sylvester Stallone, who Poole has served as Sly’s long-time stunt double, even to this day) and a Stunt Coordinator. By the turn of the current decade, doubling for Stallone aside, Poole has almost exclusively worked as a Stunt Coordinator.
His latest project to open in theaters is Director Jeff Nichols’ true-life inspired story about a mid-’60s motorcycle gang, The Bikeriders. To achieve Nichols’s vision, Poole had to strive for authenticity throughout the shoot. All of the motorcycles seen in the film are of the vintage variety, and are much more challenging to operate than modern bikes. With a starry cast that includes Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon, and Norman Reedus among others, Poole’s responsibility to keep actors safe while achieving the authenticity required was a delicate and creative balance.
In our conversation, Poole and I discuss that balance while also going deep into what it takes to go from stuntman to Stunt Coordinator.
Awards Daily: The first thing I want to do is congratulate you for your Emmy nomination last year for Tulsa King. It’s also great news that the Oscars are going to start recognizing stunt work too. I think this is long overdue. I’m glad to see your whole portion of the industry finally being recognized for the work you do.
Freddie Poole: Much appreciated. I think it’s long overdue, like you said. But I do appreciate the nod for the Emmy. That was actually a nice surprise. That’s something that caught me off guard, but I was very thankful.
Awards Daily: Speaking of motorcycles, you also worked on Sons of Anarchy.
Freddie Poole: I did. That actually was one of my favorite shows. I don’t get to watch a lot of television, but when that one was airing, I was like man, this show is really good. And then I ended up working on it. The stunt coordinator at the time was like a mentor and big brother. So it was a great experience to at least not have The Bikeriders be my very first experience with any type of motorcycle show. I was grateful for that experience on Sons.
Awards Daily: Obviously The Bikeriders is a very different type of project. Being a period piece, the motorcycles are not the same kind of motorcycles they were using on Sons. Before I get a little more into that though, how many of the actors that you worked with on the movie had actual motorcycle experience?
Freddie Poole: Just a handful. Of course, Tom had experience. Boyd Holbrook, Beau Knapp, Karl Glusman, Austin Butler had some. Damon Herriman had a little. We had to really get him up to speed. But the reality is, some of those guys didn’t have any. We never put Michael Shannon or Emory Cohen on a motorcycle. Of course you know Norman Reedus rides all the time. He has a reality show about riding motorcycles. Nonetheless, and this goes for everyone, even though you have experience with motorcycles, the majority of that is with modern bikes, which are night and day from the bikes that we had. One of the things that Jeff Nichols really wanted to do is be as authentic as possible. And it started with the motorcycles. We had real vintage Harley Davidson and Triumph motorcycles on this show. It was a challenge to figure out how we were going to get these guys to acclimate to these bikes. These have drum brakes, not disc brakes. They don’t have snapback throttles. So there’s a whole process to get them prepared to be able to ride, to capture some of the visuals that Jeff Nichols envisioned.
Awards Daily: How much of a different experience, feel-wise is it from a modern motorcycle to a vintage?
Freddie Poole: I mean, how about just starting the bike? These are kickstart motorcycles. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can go home with an injury just starting the bike. So, yeah, the whole feel of the motorcycles are so much different. Modern day bikes, whether cruisers like Harleys or speed bikes or sport bikes like Ducati, they’re just different from these bikes. It takes some time getting used to the feel, how they break, how they throttle and all the shifting patterns. We had suicide shift, handshift bikes on set. It was a real tricky situation to work around because the first question from producers was how are we going to do this? That was literally the question I got and I didn’t have my feet on the ground yet. This is over Zoom meetings. I said we’re going to need some time, first and foremost. Obviously if we don’t have the time, then we won’t be able to achieve what we want to. But yeah, those motorcycles are no joke. There needs to be some time spent with them. They’re delicate.
Awards Daily: The producers are probably talking to some insurance people who are also like you’re putting Tom Hardy on what?
Freddie Poole: (Laughs). Our insurance person was with us the entire movie. Every time I turned, she was right next to me on either side. I don’t know how she did it. I looked to my right. There she was. Look to my left. There she was. (Laughs). And she was actually lovely to work with. We just had to go through the entire process, lay everything out, talk about certain scenes where we did see our talent on the motorcycles. Then there were some ways that we can work around getting the shots that we needed, like close ups and things of that nature. I mean, Jodie Comer we couldn’t put on one of these vintage bikes, but there were certain shots we wanted to achieve, especially the bridge sequence. She’s on the back of the bike with Austin Butler and turns and looks behind her and there’s just the sea of headlights approaching her, which is such a great shot in the film. We had to get a little creative in how to achieve all that. It took a lot of time and a lot of prep in order to do that.
Awards Daily: There are very few actors that if you were casting a film about a motorcycle club, where Tom Hardy wouldn’t come to mind very quickly. What was it like working with Tom Hardy, who is, I think, one of the more unique actors around.
Freddie Poole: It was a great experience for me. Tom and I actually are now friends. So we reach out and check on each other and text. And of course with the premiere of the movie, we’ve been on the phone texting, but what really set the tone for us is the fact that Tom loves Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and he’s an avid practitioner. Well, I happen to be a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I knew Tom was a practitioner and one of the things I told Jeff Nichols early on was you might want to let him know that the stunt coordinator is a black belt in Jiu Jitsu. So that was his second question when we first met. His first was you’re the stunt coordinator, and I said, yes. And he said, you’re the Jiu Jitsu black belt. And I said, yes. After I said yes, it was a hug and there was a bond right at that moment. That bond is still there and it carried on throughout the film. It really helped set the tone and the pace for us, because I could just pretty much just talk to him, not as Tom Hardy, the movie star, but Tom Hardy, the human being. You develop a sense of comfort and trust with these actors, and this is something I experienced with Sylvester Stallone as well, because I’ve been with him for many years: once they sort of let that guard down and drop those walls and you’re just talking to him and speaking to them just like you would any other human being, I think there’s an appreciation there. The dialogue just simply opens up. It makes it so much easier to communicate. So we were fortunate. I have to give a nod to Jiu Jitsu for providing that and giving us that path.
Awards Daily: Om the other end of the spectrum, you have Austin Butler, who is just this newly emerging star, and I’m just going to say it straight out, one of the best looking human beings that has probably ever walked the earth. It’s annoying how good looking he is. (Laughs).
Freddie Poole: That one scene where he’s leaning over the pool table in his cutoff sleeve shirt, he just kind of looks up and he’s so brooding. I even said it. I said oh, the camera just loves him. I think I said that out loud on set, and it’s true. It’s true. He’s a good looking man. I’m not ashamed to say that.
Awards Daily: You said he had ridden a little, but not a lot.
Freddie Poole: Again, it’s the style of bike. I was still doing Tulsa King season one, and our co-coordinator was in charge of all the motorcycles. Some of them were his personal bikes. There’s that iconic shot of the bridge that’s in the book The Bikeriders that Danny Lyon shot and published. There’s that shot of Austin, and the one that Austin rode in the film is our stunt co-coordinator’s personal bike as well as a few others. He was out there in California training Austin early, early on, because even if you have experience, it doesn’t matter with these kinds of bikes. You have to acclimate to this type of breaking, shifting, starting. The whole thing is just such a different experience than a modern day bike. But he did it, and that’s the thing about Austin Butler: he puts the time and work in. He’s not just a pretty face. He actually puts in work.
Awards Daily: How often did you use doubles in the movie and, and did some folks do a little bit more on a bike than others?
Freddie Poole: All the scenes obviously where you see Austin and Tom riding, that’s them. We did have a double, who’s our co-coordinator, who was also Austin Butler’s riding double. There was that chase sequence that we had, and obviously you minimize risk. It’s better if you put someone with the experience on the bike. But there were some creative ways of shooting so that we could get around and circumvent having to use a vintage motorcycle. Like a trike, trikes are very easy to operate, to learn how to ride. For a lot of those closeups, it was just a grip rig with a camera operator safetied in there and that gave us the opportunity to shoot these closeups. But then sometimes, like I said, the bridge sequence with Jodie on the back, we had all those real motorcycles coming into the frame, and riders.
Awards Daily: That’s what I was thinking about too, when you have that group coming through. If they’re not all experienced riders, and they’re on these older bikes, there’s that Tour de France worry, where somebody just clips somebody’s wheel type of thing. As a stunt coordinator, does your heart ever get a little big in your chest?
Freddie Poole: Absolutely. The way we designed those sequences with the pack rides, is that obviously we needed our cast in position. We kind of gave them spots. Here’s your spot, here’s Beau Knapp and here’s Boyd Holbrook. This is where you’re going to ride. And then we actually had our co-coordinator riding in the middle of the pack. And then the rest of those guys were all stunt guys. So when you look at the Vandals, the motorcycle club, and you see all the other guys…I sat down with Jeff Nichols and laid out I don’t know how many photos, because obviously there’s a certain look that we’re trying to achieve. But we cast stuntmen to ride those bikes and to play those parts as well. I think that really helped us get around the fact that we couldn’t just put all actors on every single bike. That’s where probably insurance number one would say okay, y’all are “riding the line.” But that helped us quite a bit to bring in that experience and I think that actually helped our actors too because they know that they’re surrounded with guys that are highly experienced.
Awards Daily: You’ve worked on plenty of projects that were more explosive or colorful in terms of stunt work. What is the difference between doing that type of stunt work and this type of stunt work where you’re trying to stay in the realm of reality so that people can feel that authenticity?
Freddie Poole: I think it allows us to be authentic in a sense because we’re not hiding things with the colorfulness. What you see is what you get. In order to achieve that, a lot of thought and a lot of preparation has to go into that because we can’t hide behind special effects or things of that nature, or CGI or anything like that. It’s raw, it’s gritty. And those were the words that were used to describe what we were going after and trying to achieve in this film. I had a handful of conversations and meetings with Jeff prior to meeting him in person. And that really helped me dial into his thought process and have a true understanding of what he was going for. Because I had that opportunity, I could see what we’re trying to do here. Let’s go do it. And of course there are other projects, like you said, where it’s all about the colorfulness and the explosions and this and that. It goes back to just how much time you spend figuring out what the vision is. Once you figure that out, then it’s easily achievable.
Awards Daily: There is a death scene on a motorcycle in the movie. It’s very sudden. It’s like a second and a half. As a stunt coordinator, when you’re setting up this accident to happen and you don’t have this drawn out lead up to it, and thenhaving this suddenness to it, does that mean anything different to you?
Freddie Poole: It does. When you have a scene like that, in my world, we do want to see it in full. As morbid as that sounds, that’s kind of who we are. (Laughs). Stunt performers and stunt coordinators—we want to see that action and Jeff sort of found a unique way to tell that story. And it was very quick, very sudden. I remember on the day we were trying to dial this in because we actually didn’t use a real motorcycle for the gag. We had built a mechanism where our stunt double could actually go for a ride on tracks. It’s similar to just being on a roller coaster. You’re just sitting in this apparatus and it’s moving you down the track. And then, once you hit the end mark, then you have to obviously become a stuntman and launch yourself and hit a mark on the vehicle. That was a different way of shooting, but I understand the point behind it. But again, it was quick and sudden, but I think it was impactful to say the least..
Awards Daily: The fight scenes are not drawn out either. They’re kind of sloppy, like fights really are in real life. Sometimes they’re over very quickly because, well, I guess if Tom Hardy punches you in the stomach, it’s going to be quick. (Laughs). There’s always also some knife work that you have to concern yourself with. In a sense of trying to maximize effect, but also keep to Jeff’s vision of realism for the fight scenes as well, what was your tactic?
Freddie Poole: Going back to just sitting down with Jeff and talking through the story beats, when it comes to actual moves, and I say this all the time, moves are interchangeable. Do you want a cross here or an uppercut? It doesn’t matter. Right? What looks visually impactful on the camera? Okay, great. Let’s do that. But to be able to tell the story is important and we tell that story through action. Instead of choreo, we call it “storeo.” What that does is give the audience not just a fight, but they see the story through the characters’ movements versus their dialogue. You have these emotional ups and downs that we hope are impactful to the audience. I think you get that with the way these fights were designed. Going to the first beginning fight with Austin/Benny sitting in the bar and the two goons, it’s a brutal sequence. All those sequences, during prep, we would sit down with Jeff and talk things through. He’s a very involved director. Some of them just say oh, go put something down and let’s take a look at it, whereas Jeff was very specific about certain beats and certain story points. That equips me with what I need and I go out with the stunt team and we shoot a pre-vis.
Basically, we go as a stunt team, and I bring stunt doubles in, and we shoot that pre-visualization of that scene, that action piece. So like the big brawl, we shot that with, I forgot how many guys we had, a bunch of guys out in the field just beating each other up. We shoot that, we edit it, we present it, and our goal is that, if it’s done the right way, when it comes to the time on set when you’re shooting that for the film itself, you can almost just go. You won’t go shot for shot because we’re using one camera to shoot pre-vis, but of course, when we’re shooting, you get anywhere from two cameras plus. But, it gives them a map to follow and that really helps the process. I think we were successful in that. But it goes back to the time I spent with Nichols, going over these fights, talking through these story beats. One particular moment with Mike Shannon and what he does in that big brawl, here he is a sort of larger than life character. And that’s what we’re trying to convey. I think we accomplished that. So that’s kind of the process. And I do that with every action piece, regardless whether it’s for a television show or a film, but the ability to have that time to talk things through, to figure out what this director likes, doesn’t like, that’s one aspect. The other aspect is the actor. When I’m dealing with someone like Tom Hardy, I have got to go talk to him about it. Hey, this is what we’re thinking here. What are your thoughts? I like to do this. I like to do that. Okay, let’s inject some of that in there. I’m used to that process, because that’s my exact process and it has been for a long time with Sylvester Stallone.
Awards Daily: One of the most enjoyable things about my job that I’ve found is whether you’re talking to a stunt coordinator, a makeup artist, costume design, folks who are not the screenwriters, the director or the actors, I hear the same thing all the time: we’re storytellers. Not just part of a story being told, not like a piece or a widget, but you yourselves are storytellers.
Freddie Poole: Oh, 100%. That’s what I tell the young, up and coming crowd and group of stunt guys. Moves are cool, but what is it that you’re really trying to achieve? What is the story that you’re telling? Make sure that you have that understanding. I can see how wardrobe and hair and makeup, all of that goes into it. It’s funny you bring that up. I always have conversations with these different departments whenever we have action. I go and talk to them. Because how is my action affecting another department? It could be hair, makeup, wardrobe, could be set deck, could be special effects. We have this open line of communication because we’re all on the same team and trying to achieve the same thing. If I know that Austin Butler needs to take this certain amount of punishment in the beginning, in the bar sequence, I will have a conversation with hair and makeup. We talk about what that looks like. I know the director has their thoughts and vision, but I think it helps when the stunt coordinator can come in and go well, realistically, this is what it would be like because I’ve seen this in real life–not to say that they haven’t–but just to help give that sense of realism to it. And again, I think everyone’s really appreciative when you have that open line of communication.
Awards Daily: This is a two-in-one question: 1) what does it take to become a stunt coordinator? And then 2) do you still do occasional stunts yourself?
Freddie Poole: I’ll answer the last one first. Yes, for Sly, for Stallone. I’m still his stunt double. I’m working with him right now. We’re doing season two of Tulsa King, so I’ll definitely dress out and double him on that. I don’t always get to do stunts as much anymore because the way my career path has taken me, I’m coordinating most of the time. I do get the calls though, occasionally still, which is nice. It’s still nice to get called, even though you have to turn down shows, unfortunately. I tell the young stunt performers, young stunt generation, because what they see is what goes on on set: cool fights, cool motorcycles and car crashes. They see all the good and the fun stuff, but the process to get to this point is not difficult as long as you have an open line of communication and you understand and know how to communicate, number one. Because you’re not just communicating with stunt performers, you’re communicating with production, you’re communicating with other department heads and other people in their department. All these things that go into becoming a coordinator people don’t think about.
It takes a lot of time and it can be tedious. When I have fifteen guys that I have to cast, that means I have to get all their information to production so they can come up with contracts. Are we traveling them in? Now the travel coordinator needs that info. Hair and makeup, they want pictures. Wardrobe needs sizes. All this work that goes into getting all that information to production before I even see the guys. Then when we’re talking about action pieces and action sequences, where are those taking place? Are we on location? Are we on stage? Well, I need to go tech scout and see these locations. Then we have the conversations like I said earlier with the director about what’s the vision? Do I need to shoot a pre-vis? What do I need from other departments whether it be art or special effects. It’s just a never ending list of prep that goes into becoming a stunt coordinator. I’ve sat down with a few young stunt guys and just opened up my laptop and said look, here’s my process. They become a little wide eyed. It’s a lot of information. You don’t just shut it off, and you don’t show up, do a fight, clock out and go home.
Awards Daily: I imagine this was a really cool project to work on.
Freddie Poole: Oh, most definitely. I mean, period piece, motorcycles, Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, and Jodie Comer—who’s amazing, Norman Reedus who I’ve worked with on The Walking Dead in the past, so, just this star studded, amazing cast that Jeff Nichols put together. I had a blast. I really enjoyed every minute. And a lovely team: the crew as well were such a pleasure to work with, and it was a great experience for me.
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