EXCLUSIVE: David Holmes The Boy Who Lived talks about Potter, Music and Cunning Stunts.

Just before Christmas Over the Shoulder was honoured to interview the Harry Potter stuntman legend David Holmes who has captured the nations imagination and heart in the moving documentary, The Boy Who Lived. Although David sustained a broken neck after a stunt went horribly wrong filming The Deathly Hallows his lust for life, bravery and engagement with the world around him burns bright. We discuss his stuntman story, his love of music, his fight for disability access and awareness, his podcast and of course Harry Potter.  

Your story in the Boy who lived has moved and enthralled everyone who has seen it. Are you surprised by the documentary’s success?

I knew we were going to find an audience because of Harry Potter. However, I am humbled by the outpouring of love and positivity that is brought back to me through social media and how it’s doing in the world. 

Harry Potter means a lot for a lot of people. There are children in conflict zones all across the world watching those films on phones and it makes them feel safe.

I’m very proud of my little contribution to that and what it has done for them. We’ve now added an extra layer by me telling my story. We waited for the right time and now the audience that were growing up when I had my accident are rediscovering Harry Potter with their own children. For them to be exposed to a breaking of your neck is not a nice positive thing to be associated with, but after you see how I live with it and how I try and be with it the reaction has made me very proud. It’s been really humbling.

Your pathway into stunt work was through gymnastics. Is this a common entrance into the industry for young people?

The thing with gymnastics is we are so used to taking direction from our coaches to develop new skill sets that it plays into going into stunt work or even any performance art really. A lot of gymnasts turn to dancing or if they don’t become gymnasts, they can apply those lessons to other sports. It really is a great foundation sport for any kid to start off with. But yes, a lot of gymnasts go into the stunt game or circus performance.

Then there are people that come to the stunt industry from the horse and driving world. The stunt industry attracts a certain type of person and I was one of those people, and I still am.

What was your daily routine filming Potter? Was there a lot of hanging around? 

Loads and loads of downtime. I’d drive around the M25 to the studio from where I live in Essex and then I’d start training. I’d train for an hour and then have a shower. Then have breakfast in the crew canteen, then on set for 8 o’clock. Normally, the set would run for 8 hours but some days it would run for 12. Sometimes you’re called on set, sometimes you’re waiting on the side of set on the radio waiting to be called. 

At lunchtime, three times a week, Daniel would come to me and we’d do stunt training where I’d teach him gymnastics and we would fool around.

I created an environment for him to be just a kid, jumping off port cabins, bouncing on trampolines, all of the things that most insurance companies would have a heart attack about! That is how mine and Daniel’s relationship developed.

In the early days he was like my little brother and now he’s one of my best friends. Everyone got to watch him grow up in front of the camera but I got to see him grow as a man behind it. So, I’m very lucky. I spoke to him yesterday.

How is he? Is he good? 

He’s on good form.

He’s just recently welcomed into the world a young child. Seeing him as a father is a beautiful thing. When I facetimed him yesterday, he had been bouncing around. He’s a person that moves a lot to keep his mind active and turns out his little baby’s exactly the same!

Was there competition amongst the stuntwomen and stuntmen to think of new techniques and challenges in your work? 

I think there’s always a push to develop stunt action in cinema. If you’re not pushing, you’re not doing your job right. There’s no point showing the same old stunt, the same old fall that we’ve seen a thousand times.

I still think the best pratfall in cinema history is the one performed by Tolga Kenan, who was the young stunt double for Harry as well as Neville. The Neville spell, where he falls back flat is iconic. It’s been recreated a million times by kids on their sofas at home. I get sent videos of it all the time.

With stunt action you’re always pushing the boundaries, but with regards to competition between men and women I don’t feel that it was a thing. I know some stunt women that are way ballsy, or as ballsy as all the men.

In fact, in the stunt game the women get the harder job. You can’t put knee pads on when you’re wearing a skirt and a vest top. Hollywood will stick you in high heels, skirt and a vest top and then say, “oh, you are going to get run over by a car but you can’t wear pads when you’ve got barely no clothes on”. So, the girls take some unbelievable whacks. A good friend of mine Kim McGarrity, who is by far one of the ballsiest human beings out there got run over by a motorbike once on a job, and the story is recounted and told amongst stunt departments all around the world. 

Did you do any stunts for the actresses?

The first time you see me in Harry Potter, I’m actually Hermione underneath the bathroom stalls as the troll smashes through the doors of the bathroom and you see it all splinter. That was me, that’s my top shot. Top that! I’m a small man so I was able to dub all of the young cast on the early films. It wasn’t just Harry but Ron, Hermione, Neville, Malfoy and if I didn’t perform a stunt on camera for them, I did all of the lining up for them.

I always say not only was I the first Quidditch player in the world, but I don’t think any other human being has got more broomstick air miles than me! If they gave out air miles for real, I’d be flying first class!

At the end of the Boy who lived you sit down with your fellow stuntmen from the Potter movies. I found that scene very moving. What was it like to reunite with them and reminisce about old times? 

Well, they’re my boys, all of them.

Sitting in the room with Tolga, Mark and Dan and just talking about my accident, our lives, where we were then, where we are now, it was really important to show that.

For men it’s important to talk. It’s something that we don’t do enough and it’s still something that I don’t do enough of in my life. So, especially this time of year we should always encourage people to pick up the phone to anyone that could be lonely.  

In an interview you said that BlindBoy podcast and music has brought positivity into your life. Preparing for a stunt during the Potter films did you listen to music to get you in the right mindset?

Oh, I love Blind Boy. Come on, it’s the best. 

He touches on all subjects.

There is nothing that he’s not willing to talk about. He’s a proud Irishman who delves into Irish mythology. He taught me that the structure of modern music, the four-bar system of modern music is because of gothic cathedrals. The other day he was talking about he wants to buy himself a new bicycle and he doesn’t want a street bike because it ravages your colon, and I thought what a brilliant way of describing what a bad bike saddle can do to you. 

I know what a bad bike saddle feels like, the same feeling as when I’m on a broomstick!

Back in the day on Potter I had a CD player in my car and a big fat CD wallet in the footwell. I would try and find the right album for inspiration driving to the studio, trying to build the right energy level so as to not peak too much. A lot of stunts are controlling your adrenaline so you can apply it at the right time.

So, if I knew I was going to have a really adrenaline filled day, then I would listen to something like The Miseducation of Lauren Hill. And then the drive home afterwards, you’re trying to decompress and also keep conscious because you’re tired after the big rush.

Finding the right music helps you, like we all do in our life, right? 

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I have hard days and I think it’s important for people to see me like this, being able to live with my disability and project past what it is to live with a broken neck.

I have my coping strategies and music is definitely one. It can relieve it and can relieve a bit of stress as well from it. I choose art as a painkiller instead of actual painkillers.

I read about you saying that wheelchair access at music gigs is rubbish. Have you noticed that West End theatre is pretty awful too? 

Like really, really, really, really bad. There are a million occasions I can recount to you where I felt like a second-class citizen. Every time I leave my house, I’m reminded that I’m an afterthought.

Everybody’s pitching for inclusivity at the moment. Everyone knows Gay Pride get the month of June to raise awareness because every company sticks a logo on their flag and say ‘we’re inclusive,’ right?

No-one can tell me when Disability Awareness Month is. It’s because it’s a damn sight cheaper to stick a rainbow on your logo and sell to the pink pound than it is to employ disabled people, adapt your buildings and be fully inclusive as a society.

So, we have a long way to go. I will always scream to the rafters how I feel left out a lot of the time. I have a partner that’s a wheelchair user. I can’t take her to the Harry Potter show at the Lyceum in London and sit next to her and hold her hand in both our wheelchairs because there’s not two wheelchair seats next to each other. 

Do you know what that feels like?

I would like to start a music festival called FESTABLE and make it fully inclusive for wheelchair users and put us as the priority over able bodied people.

Your podcast Cunning Stunts offers fascinating insights into the world of stunts in movies. How and when did this idea take form?

Well, that was kind of the launchpad for my documentary, really. Some of the best times I ever had on a film set was sitting around listening to stuntmen and women recount the stories of the gags that they performed and the adventures that they had on and off of set, in front of and behind the camera.

I always wanted to get these stories out there. The stunt department don’t get BAFTAs or Oscars. We are not credited as the artists that we are. So, I took it upon myself to try and highlight the sacrifices made by my friends that risk their bodies and as we know with me, it can go wrong. 

I wanted to highlight these amazing, talented, wonderful human beings that put their life on the line for the sake of storytelling. Me and Daniel just started recording some podcast episodes. We’ve got some stuff on camera and I’ve done some more of the episodes individually over Zoom.

Then Daniel wanted to turn the camera onto me and reflect my story and the way I handled my life. It took a lot of convincing, until eventually a few years down the line we brought a director on board and so my documentary was born. Now it’s out doing wonderful things in the world, even though I haven’t seen it.

 How important is it to you to highlight the safety issues involved when doing stunts?

I think it’s important to accept the fact that it’s stunt work and there is always an element of risk, however stunts need to be able to be performed more than once. You know, there’s no point just smashing someone up and then bringing the next stuntman in like cannon fodder.

We should be able to bring audiences exciting things to see on screen but have the skill and mastery to execute it multiple times without hurting an individual. That takes new techniques, good rehearsals, creating new equipment and improving the technical sides of things. That’s where I’m really, really proud of Mark and Tolga.

They’ve gone on to develop new working techniques with wire works. They were the stunt team for the Star Wars movies. They had Adam Driver doing a hundred-foot jump over massive water cannons and landing right in front of Daisy Ridley in a giant lightsabre fight. They could do it because it’s rehearsed meticulously over and over again by a stunt performer, and then they are able to have confidence in the actor to perform it.

Any good stuntman and stuntwoman work with the person that they’re doubling to try and enhance their skill set so they can get away with doing as much of the action as possible as themselves. But all the risky part’s done by us. We’re the ones doing the rehearsals, we’re the ones walking the tightrope first before anyone steps on and then says, “I get to do my own stunts”.

So, unless you’re Tom Cruise, you can’t really claim that. He does big gags and as a stunt actor and from a stunt performance perspective I salute the man. He works with my department and he pushes himself and the department to create some of the best gags we’ve seen in cinema history.

How realistic do you think the stunt film The Fall Guy that is coming out next year will be?

Well, it’s from Chad Stahelski and Dave Leitch so I believe it will be very, very realistic. Those guys did John Wick. They are stuntmen themselves and Chad was Brad Pitt’s stunt double and Dave Leitch was Keanu Reeves’s.

They started the John Wick series because they had a stunt facility in Los Angeles where actors and stunt performers had a place to be where they could collectively work together in a safe environment for stunt rehearsals.

That was when they got the script in front of Keanu for John Wick. The rest is history. They are the Hollywood’s biggest action movie directors charging 20 million a picture so It’ll be really good.

Over The Shoulder would like to thank David for taking time to talk to us about his life and career. He has not let his accident define him and although he said to me that he did not want to be thought of as an inspiration, he most clearly is in the truest sense of the word.

Below is David Holmes go fund me page where he is giving back to the hospital that saved his life. https://tr.ee/EBKE2PiJIu

2 Comments

  1. Mark said:

    Great interview. Loved it

    January 3, 2024
    Reply
  2. obviously like your website but you need to test the spelling on quite a few of your posts Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very troublesome to inform the reality on the other hand Ill certainly come back again

    February 19, 2024
    Reply

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