With Ballerina now available to watch at home, I recently sat down with stunt coordinator Jackson Spidell & supervising stunt coordinator Stephen Dunlevy (John Wick franchise; Extraction; Suicide Squad) to talk about designing the brutal, inventive action that fuels the first feature-length spin-off set in the World of John Wick.
They break down how they split responsibilities between coordinating fights and explosions, the intense training Ana de Armas undertook to bring Eve to life, and what it really takes to pull off flamethrowers, grenade-fu, and more without cutting corners.
They also shared stories from set about working alongside Chad Stahelski and Len Wiseman, the importance of practical stunts, and why Ana’s commitment changed how much of her could appear in-camera during the film’s most demanding sequences.
Watch our full chat below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: On a project like this, how do you divvy up your responsibilities as the stunt coordinator and the supervising stunt coordinator, respectively?
JACKSON: Well, I think for this, we just knew what our benefits were - Steve's great with explosions and cars and going with that stuff, whereas I come from a fight background. And, I think, Steve tell me if I'm wrong, that it's kind of like where we just knew what each other's strengths were, and kind of just let each other ride with it.
STEPHEN: Modern filmmaking has evolved so much where, as a stunt coordinator, I would love to be, you know, in with the stunt team, just devising stunts all day and doing that. There's so many location scouts, there's so many meetings, there's so many script changes, there's so much talk about having to develop a script with that. So, a lot of what my job is going to these scouts and everything, relaying information, working out who needs to be where, and doing all those kind of things. And then, you know, liaising with special effects, with explosions and everything like that, while I can have Jackson, he has got the script, working with a fight team and everything like that, developing what the look of the fights are, and things like that. And then, I come in with notes, and, you know, pre-vis things, and even look at pre-vis and things like that, there's so much going on, the longer we do this. So, I have to have someone like Jackson basically there as the ultimate right hand man, to be able to basically almost be a step ahead of me, to come in and be like, hey, we want to do this. He's like, funny enough, we did this yesterday. Like, how about this version of what we're going to do, and I know we said we're going to do this, but we also have this alternate version. Because it's like what the script says, but then the director will be like, ah, give me alternates, you know, so it's like give me a different vision. We give our different spins on it, and play to our strengths, whereas, obviously with something like John Wick and Jackson having doubled Keanu and having a very good flavor for what the John Wick universe vibe is.
ROHAN: Jackson, you trained Ana de Armas intensely—how did you adapt Wick-style training methods to her ballerina-assassin role?
JACKSON: Creating the character first is the important thing, and then we find out the fighting style of that character. So, I knew that Ana and Keanu were close. They'd worked on multiple movies together, and I'm pretty sure they had a meeting before this all started, and I think what she said was he goes, Are you sure? Like, are you sure you want to jump on this train? And because it is such a long process, and we have to go to her at the beginning, go listen, if you want it - and Keanu, obviously, it's been in the news, it's been in the press, and all that stuff about how much he's trained for these movies that signing on to something like this isn't just a name. Does that make sense? So, she's gonna go in and we're gonna bust her ass.
STEPHEN: She has to actively participate here. There are actors that will just show up and the double will do everything, but this wasn’t going to be like that.
JACKSON: This is gonna be your shining moment, and we're gonna make sure it's your shining moment. We're gonna get you ready for your shining moment. So, you have to work for that shining moment, and go head on, and she just jumped in the water. Man, it was awesome.
STEPHEN: Short of getting hit by cars and falling off buildings. The actors really do what the stunt guys do, they train. They come in, like Keanu comes in and starts training at, you know, 7am in the morning and he’s there till past midday. He's doing everything the fight guys will do, you know, and everything the weapons guys will do.
JACKSON: I think he gave her some words of wisdom and then she came in ready.
STEPHEN: Yeah, she came in eager and ready, and because not every actor wants to do it, but she came in and threw herself into it, committed 100%, which makes our job easier, you know? And then, we can shoot her longer. You can stay on shots. You can do more complex fight sequences. It fantastic when you get actors like that that want to do that.
ROHAN: Stephen, what unique challenges did the flamethrower or fire-extinguisher sequences pose, compared to typical Wick stunts?
STEPHEN: I mean, we were very lucky with that, I think Chad understands that. Firstly, Chad is all about doing things practically, like as a director. Not every director is into that, because fire can be intimidating and something like that can be intimidating. So, obviously Chad and the studio wanted to do it. So, they gave us the time and the resources to be able to do it. We brought out Jayson Dumenigo and the Action Factory team, who is the premier. He just won a technical Oscar this year, in sciences, for his development of fire gel and things like that. So, firstly, they gave us the team. Any sequence like that, the team that you have your base layer, that pyramid, determines how much you can do. So, we had fantastic guys. We're using local guys who were very willing. We trained them up. And we had a fantastic special effects team that developed those three different styles of flame throwers for us. One was an IPA gun, a liquid like isopropyl alcohol, and then, we had a gas version, and then, we had bee pollen, like a podium, which is almost like a pollen. So, we had three different styles to work with through that sequence. They gave us the time and resources to be able to start with just testing the guns and getting the actors and the performers familiar with it, and then start to burn people, and then having that time allowed us to do longer and closer burns. So, it's all about the time, which not every studio is willing or director is willing to give us these days because they don't understand the process. So, that again, and having actors that were willing to do it, performers that were willing to do it, allowed us to push the boundaries of that. I think the closest burn we did, we did 109 full body burns in eight days, and we did the closest burn we had was the full flame thrower eight feet away from Jayson. Though we're doing that, that's crawling, that's no joke, close distance, yeah, crawling through and everything like that. So it allowed us to to really expand what we could do.
ROHAN: Grenade-fu was another standout. How did you design that sequence?
JACKSON: We kind of just went moment heavy with that. We're like, what's going to be memorable? The in between, like action moments are kind of like here and there. Obviously, we wanted to do something cool, but it was more about the moments of like here, put it in his mouth, smash it, like people are going to remember that stuff, and then putting his backpack and kicking in down the stairs, like that kind of stuff, if that makes sense.
STEPHEN: You can choreograph the scene in two ways. You do it linearly, like you go through the whole fight, or, like with that one, it was like, what's cool? What can we do? You know, Jackson was like, what can we do? So, we came up with those snippets, because the whole idea was, it's different rooms. Okay, well, we can do different sections and different fights. And as we're going, we work very close, you know, it's not like we're in separate departments, where I'm with the fight team every day. I'm just jumping out to things and everything, like, so we're coming, it's like, okay, we're going to do this. Hey, we came up with this cool thing by punching it in the mouth, but we want to do it all in one shot. And if you look, it doesn't cut away. We had to design a wall that gave away, so when he gets it in the mouth and everything, that's a real explosion. He disappears through a wall. She's holding the door that I tested. I remember standing there the first time going, all right, let's see how this goes. And that door, and then she opens and goes through the wall. The wall slides away, and everything like that. So, it's kind of one of those underappreciated shots, that whole thing is just one shot, but you don't kind of get an appreciation for it. And the team took all that footage, all those moments to Len and was like, hey, let's piece this together into a sequence and see what we can do, and then we just come up with a little bit of shoe leather in between. So, and then, obviously the editors do what they want with it and things like that. A scene like that is very much just, you have to work very closely with every department and play with it and that took several different iterations of playing with it and coming up with different sequences - well that let's do this and, you know, and then obviously getting the time with her to be able to time it out so she's in the right place at the right time. So, if an explosion is going and the safety procedures involved, because obviously, if you've got a performer behind a door, but then there's an explosion, there has to be full safety protocols of, okay, when he's at this spot, then we can blow it, if we don't see him here, you don't blow it. And we got someone with the special effects team, like I was standing next to the special effects team calling it and everything like that. So, there's never an element where something that can go wrong, that could cause any problems to someone.
It's an exciting scene. We made it sound like, on the day, it’s very like this is the numbers, this is how we do it - that comes out awesome on screen, but the reality and the practicality of the art, yeah, it becomes very, you know, all right, what are we blowing up today?
The next chapter from the World of John Wick follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma. Eve seeks revenge for her father’s death, and finds herself crossing paths with John Wick himself (Keanu Reeves).