Stunt performers have long been one of the most unappreciated crew members. Perhaps that’s because their work is often invisible, with falls, jumps, explosions, and more seamlessly blending into the overall scenes when executed well. After all, the best stunt performers make some of the hardest work on set look easy.
Thankfully, the industry is starting to highlight these artists in the way they deserve, as the 2028 Academy Awards will finally include a Best Stunt Design category. Sure, it comes a century too late, but the fact that they’re finally being officially recognized and rewarded is a start.
Fanversation got the chance to speak to one of the best in the business, Chelsea Bruland, who started as a stunt performer and has since transitioned into stunt coordinator and second unit director roles. During the conversation, she discussed working on everything from Black Widow to Get Out, the hardest (and most rewarding) stunts she’s ever performed, what fans can expect from The Hunting Wives Season 2, and much more.
FANVERSATION: I know you have a background in so many sports, including gymnastics. I’m a big gymnastics fan — my sister did it all growing up — so I’m curious, which event would you say best prepared you for stunt work?
CHELSEA BRULAND: Well, the floor was definitely my favorite apparatus. I came from a dance background — I’m a natural performer — and floor is the apparatus that you get to perform the most on. I think each one of them individually gives you elements that are useful for stunts. You balance on the beam, obviously, and dismounting on bars gives you air awareness.
I’m a huge Black Widow fan. The action in that movie feels very intimate and character-driven. I’m curious if you can talk about the scenes that you worked on for that film.
I was the stunt coordinator on the VFX plate unit on Black Widow, so I was responsible for the scenes where they’re driving in the beginning. On that one, I was a small part of a much bigger picture. I was in Atlanta while the main unit was still shooting in London, and the reason we had to do it then was because it was really dependent on these cornfields, and by the time that they were coming back to America to shoot additional photography and stuff, the corn would have been harvested and gone. We needed the tall corn to be able to drive into the picturesque cornfields. It was time-dependent, which is why I ended up doing that small unit.
You’ve done stunts for such a wide range of projects, from action and horror to comedy, romance, and family films. How does your process differ depending on what genre you’re working in?
It differs massively. At the beginning of a job, you’ll sit down with the showrunner or the producers, and you’ll have a big conversation about tone and the overall vision of the whole film or TV series, which dictates the approach. Superhero movies are larger than life, where you suspend your disbelief a little bit and go for the spectacle of it, whereas dramas would be much more grounded in reality, so you go for much more realism.
You’ve worked on so many movies that people might not think would have any stunts. What’s the most common “hidden” stunt that you see as a stunt coordinator?
Oh, there are so many. And even I’m guilty of not thinking about it. I’ll hear a concept of something that I’m interviewing for, and I’ll be like, “Oh, there’s not much.” One that jumps to mind is that I did the adaptation of the popular book Where the Crawdads Sing. There aren’t a whole lot of stunts in that, but I ended up working a lot on it because we worked a lot on the water, and there was a young actress who was driving boats. There was also physicality and a bit of sexual assault, but everything from actors grabbing each other to falling is considered a stunt. People might not think about it if it’s not a big spectacle.
Another one is space movies, which I love doing. There’s wire work with the astronauts when they’re floating through the space station or just very balletically floating around in the zero gravity of the spaceships. That’s all stunts and wire work.
You talked about assault scenes. I know intimacy coordinators are becoming more and more of a thing. I’m curious what the relationship between a stunt coordinator and an intimacy coordinator might be.
I’ve started to work with intimacy coordinators more and more, which I love. It’s great because it generally was kind of falling on me for assault scenes, or the costume department was often picking up the slack with modesty robes and things, so it’s so nice nowadays to have a designated person. I’ve been doing the TV show The Hunting Wives at the moment, and there is a lot of intimacy mixed with action, particularly in this next season that’s coming out later this year. It’s a role that I’m so glad is becoming more prevalent. I work really closely with them when we’re moving into that world.
What have been your most challenging stunts as a performer and then as a coordinator?
I think this goes for both of them. My most challenging ones are the ones I don’t think are that difficult to begin with. The big stunts that you’re a little worried about beforehand, you do so much preparation for. You break them down into smaller pieces, and you spend so much time planning how you’re going to execute them that, by the time you get around to doing them, they’re so methodical and controlled. It’s often the ones that you’re not putting a lot of thought into because it seems so easy on paper, that when you get into the space or the director makes a change on the day — which happens quite often — suddenly, you have to stop and go, “Hold on. Time out for a minute. Let’s think this through a little more.” They’re the ones that always get you.
Reading your IMDb is so interesting. You’ve had a hand in so many different projects, doing so many different things. I know you were Allison Williams’ stunt double in some scenes for Get Out. Can you talk a little bit about what you did on that?
I was doing the driving work for her. She was driving, and then a deer leapt out on the road, and her car swerved and screeched to a stop.
You’ve done stunt driving in several movies. That feels like such a specific niche. Can you talk more about the experience of doing those scenes?
I love driving work. I actually got to do my first pipe ramp on The Purge show, which is when you’re driving along, there’s a thin metal ramp, and you hit it, go airborne in the car, and turn it over. I was the stunt coordinator on The Purge season two — there was a lot of gore on that one — and it needed a female driver to drive a van for a pipe ramp. There were a handful of female drivers who had done this already, so I had done my due diligence and called around, but all the go-to girls were off working on big car movies overseas. I was calling my mentor, going, “What do I do?” And they’re like, “You drive it, Chelsea. You’re ready at this point in your career.” I hadn’t done one before, but apparently, this is how everybody gets to do their first one — by being there. Because it’s expensive. You have to build a whole cage around the car, so there’s no training for this. The first time you ever get to do it is on set. So I made the decision to put myself in the role and have somebody else covering me for that day because I was the right person for the stunt at that point.
But a few days before we did it, the showrunner asked me if I could direct the second unit, and I was like, “Okay.” I stayed quiet about the fact that I was the one driving. The producers knew, but I don’t think he knew at the time. It was really crazy that night, but it probably helped because I didn’t have time to get nervous since I was busy directing all the lead-up shots beforehand. The stunt coordinator who had come in to cover me that day, since I was directing and then driving the stunt, was like, “Chelsea, you gotta suit up and get in the car now,” and I was like, “I’m busy lining up all the cameras for my own like car turnover.” Thank god it went off without a hitch and did exactly what we were planning on it doing, but that’s still one of the coolest things in my career. I got to direct my own car stunt.
That leads well to my next question about second unit directing. What’s been your favorite part about that, and how has stunt work helped you move into that role?
Directing is definitely the direction I want to go at the moment, and I’m loving that I have the opportunity to second unit direct more. I’m hoping that that moves into main unit episodic or features. Being a stunt coordinator — or any head of department, really — means I’ve worked really closely with the directors. So many directors come up, and they shadow another director. It’s like I’ve got years of shadowing experience now and had the ability to observe multiple different directors and how they work, how they deal with the cast, how they make their creative decisions. I can pick and borrow what I like and what I don’t like, so I’m hoping that translates to where I want to go.
Is there a director you’ve worked with where you’re like, “I love their style. I really want to emulate the way that they run a set.”?
There have been quite a few. I’m thinking of my most recent ones — Maggie Kiley is a director on The Hunting Wives, who I think is fabulous with the way that she controls and sculpts her scenes, as well as relates to the cast and the crew. I always admire the directors who are universally loved by the cast and the crew because there are some directors out there… [Grimaces] I hope that I’m one of the ones people love. People really want to help those kinds of directors. I also observe a lot of directors who can’t make a decision or keep changing their minds, and there’s a snowball effect that often creates. I’ve seen a lot from observing the back end.
Is there a show or kind of feature that would be your dream to direct?
I love space — anything with astronauts and the exploration of the universe. But I also really love the fantasy realm as well. I’m developing a project at the moment based on an independent fantasy novel. It’s half in the fae realm and half in the modern-day world as we know it, and I love playing with the two dimensions.
Everyone is anxiously awaiting The Hunting Wives Season 2. Is there anything you can tease about that?
They’ve really stepped it up from Season 1. When we made Season 1, it wasn’t originally for Netflix. It was originally for Starz when we were making it, and something happened in the interim, and Netflix took it over, and I think it was the best thing that ever happened to the show because it got a much wider audience reach. I think we were all really pleasantly surprised at just how massive it got last summer, and it’s like this season — I don’t know if this is true — but what it felt like to me is that Netflix basically said, “You can push the boundaries even more if you want.” The sexiness of it has stepped up. The stunts have stepped up. The storylines have stepped up. I’ve worked on a lot of TV shows, and the next script comes in, and your job is to read the next script. But for me, every script that came in on this one, I was so excited to read it because I really wanted to know what happened next. I think Season 2 has definitely elevated from Season 1, which was already phenomenal. I think Hunting Wives fans will be incredibly happy with where this one’s going.
— Taylor Gates