Casey O’Neill brings heavy punches to Fallout. The heightened world feels all too real, thanks in large part to the practical stunt work from O’Neill and his team of stunt artists. Together, they all help sell the strange reality of the video game adaptation. O’Neill’s work is nominated at The Emmys for Outstanding Stunt Coordination For Drama Programming.
It’s O’Neill’s first nomination in his illustrious career. He got his first big break on The Mask of Zorro, which then led to work on films such as The Lord of the Rings films, several Steven Spielberg films, and Top Gun: Maverick. Recently, O’Neill spoke with Immersive about his first Emmy nomination and why stunt coordinators and performers deserve more accolades.
As someone that was known at a certain point in your career as the horse guy, what was it like working on the opening of Fallout?
Oh, it’s funny. I ended up doing it for Walton Goggins, riding the horse for him there in New York. So we were asking Mark Fichera to be my co-coordinator on the show and I said, “Hey, Mark, are there some horseback people here?” There weren’t a lot of choices for stunt people that were proficient in riding horses in that, believe it or not, in New York. So I said, “Well, if it comes down to it, I’ll just do it.” I was the same size as Walton, so I ended up jumping on the horse and getting in the wardrobe and doing that myself.
My career started out doing a lot of horse work. That was always, I guess my expertise, my background in getting in the business, but I always did a lot of other things. So that’s what helped keep me busy through the years.
When you’re working with a horse, for you, what are the immediate dos and don’ts?
It’s funny because when the horses are on and people that aren’t used to them, they’re like screaming, “Okay, everybody ready, rolling!” And then the horses go kind of nuts and they learn the word “rolling.” So it’s always good to say, “Hey, just keep everything calm and quiet, same monotone. Don’t jump it up when we’re we’re ready to call action, just say, ‘okay, everybody ready and here we go.'” That just helps a lot.
In the end, they’re animals, so if a squirrel jumps off of a tree or something, there’s a chance that they’re going to jump left to or do something that’s not planned. Whereas if you’re in a vehicle or on a motorcycle, you’re in total control. It doesn’t jump from a squirrel or do stuff like that. Working with animals is always difficult. I say animals, water and kids, those are the three tough things in the movie business.
Walton Goggins is one of those long-time pro’s, somebody who went from gig to gig for a long time before reaching another level of public success. I’m just curious, do those long-time working actors usually make for more positive collaborations?
Definitely. I think it’s person to person just within their personalities. And I just was working with Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s also just so lovely to be on set with and such a pro. And I’ve seen the opposite where people are, they want to last minute on set or asking when am I done? How do I get out? I think that maybe it’s a generational thing. Walton Goggins has been around for a long time and he’s just a pro. I think that’s just people’s personality in general maybe.
And where are they in their careers? I’ve seen some of the biggest movie stars in the world, Anthony Hopkins, the nicest person that you’ll ever meet and talk to everyone, Billy Bob Thornton, same. There’s a huge list, but Walton’s on that list. They’re just gracious and regular people. Good, nice people. It’s very, very good to have someone like that in a leading role on your set as opposed to someone that maybe doesn’t necessarily want to be as easygoing.
Like you said, there was that period of time where you’re known as the horse guy. People in stunts can get pigeonholed. How do you break out of that?
Well, when I got into the business, one of my big breaks was Zoro doubling Antonio Banderas on the first one, the Martin Campbell movie. I didn’t know much then, but I learned on that show as well as my horse skills so people could see that I was capable of doing more than just the riding of the horses and the sword work, things like that.
But I grew up riding horses, grew up riding motorcycles, bicycles, snow skiing, water skiing and all that stuff. I grew up in Lake Arrowhead, so I was doing a lot of things in my youth that really pertained to doing stunts later on in my life. In ’96, ’97 when I really caught some traction and never really looked back, it was a time when the westerns were maybe kind of fading out.
There were a few that were there while I was coming in, and I did most of them at that time. But I saw the cowboys or the stunt guys that were just kind of doing the horse stuff. They’re like, “Oh man, there’s not a lot of work.” So I started choosing jobs. If I had a job to do a fight scene or a job to ride a motorcycle or anything but horse work, I would take the other job so much that years later, 10, 15 years later or now, people don’t even realize, “Oh my God, you did all that stuff on Lord of the Rings.”
So yeah, it’s interesting how it kind of fades out, but I think truly to be the best you can to be a s a stunt performer, which then makes you a very good stunt coordinator and director later too, you’re knowledgeable in many, many different things.
It’s like they say a jack of all trades or many trades is better than a master of one, and that helps you. I try to tell the younger stunt people coming into the business now, “Don’t just do one thing. Don’t just be a fight person. Don’t just do cars. You have to round yourself because you become so much more valuable to a production, to doubling someone where you just bring one person where you don’t have to bring five, one to do the fire, one to drive the car, one to get on the horse, one to do the, and it gets expensive for production.” So if you have someone that’s there and can do all of it, then you’ve become so much more valuable.
As long as your credits are, what was very new for you on Fallout?
The big suit. I did a lot of suit kind of stuff with Planet of the Apes, the one with Tim Burton, and those were very intricate suits and prosthetics and things like that, but having the power armor with the mass and how big it is and moving that thing around was a bit of figuring it out. I have a really great rigging a guy, Mike Lee, that’s I love to have around. We’ve done a bunch of shows together and his whole team was amazing at rigging and doing all that stuff.
We used computer wenches, fisher, computer wenches, and we had Scott Fisher, the guy that basically invented those, there with us in New York. He came out, but that’s how we flew the machine, the big power armor around with those winches, which is extremely valuable in the fact that you can make smooth moves and it’s longer moves, but it’s massive.
There’s a lot of rigging involved, and when you’re shooting, you’re kind of jumping from one thing to the next. You pre-rig everything and you just jump the lines through and try and do it as efficiently as you can, which that team, my team of guys are amazing at. And the prep is a lot of prep with other departments, construction art department and knowing, “Hey, look, this bridge is going to collapse down, but we need to have it where it doesn’t collapse down for all the other stuff.” You’re just intermixing with all the different departments to make sure everything’s working in a nice flow for everybody’s needs. But yes, the power armor was so fun and challenging to move it around and get some really cool stuff with that piece of equipment.
As a stunt coordinator, how’s it seeing your work on film as opposed to digital on Fallout?
Yeah, I love film, obviously. I think it looks the best still today. I started the business with film, and then of course, video came along. The biggest thing I noticed with the video as a stunt performer was there was no break. When they’re reloading the camera, it was just like, “Oh, let’s go again. Let’s go again. Keep rolling, rolling, and you don’t cut and you just keep rolling.” So you didn’t really get a break. When you’re doing film, you do a stunt and you get a chance while they’re reloading the camera. You get a tiny little break before you go again. But video is not like that.
I think the look of the film is so rich, it’s still very unique. And weirdly enough, I’ve worked with film a bunch. I just did Twisters, that was also a film, Westworld was a film, and there’s a few people that still use it. I just think the look is so much richer. But yeah, it’s a bit more time consuming. It’s trickier to use the volume when we’re doing the volume sets, so there’s a bit of figuring out what they had to do for that. But all in all, I think the film just looks so much better.
One major set-piece involving the volume is the attack on the vault in the pilot. There are so many stunt artists and actors involved. A lot of moving pieces. What level of planning did that take?
We had a full team of stunt people there. I think we had almost like 30 people at one point, but we did blocks of sections and that scene was filmed, one direction was the set, and the other direction was the volume. So, it was two separate locations altogether. And the way we did that was we just put together little vignettes of certain fight beats and pieces that were scripted and other ones that kind of give some ideas is and then just presented those to Jonah.
Jonah will come into the live rehearsals and say, “Oh man, that’s cool. What that person just does, let’s try this with that.” So I try to make it an open table for the directors to come in and really give some of their input, but also when it comes to the script, give them ideas that maybe they haven’t thought about either.
And then incorporating some wire work for when people get shot and some moves. And Jonah always loves to do unique camera angles where he’s focused on the bullet, you see the bullet travel and then it hits someone. I think it’s those types of ideas that make it unique. Everyone always says, “Hey, I want to do something that we’ve never seen before.” Well, you’ve seen everything. I mean, that’s the reality. Everything’s been seen unless it’s a new camera move or some way of filming something. But quite honestly, the human body can do so many different things, and we’ve seen probably everything. It’s just putting it in order differently, I guess is a trick.
Of course, anyone in your industry needs to look after themselves physically, but what about mentally? What work does that require even when you’re off-the-clock?
I definitely feel like there’s a lot more to just the physicality. You want to be physically capable of being able to fall down 15 times or doing a stair fall or getting hit by a car, whatever those things are to physically be able to get up and not be injured. I think any normal person doesn’t think it’s a good idea to get hit by a car, right? Because there are some very big dangers there.
Already you’re a unique personality to start with or to say, “I’m going to leap off of a building, or I’m going to do something that most people don’t want to do.” And so, your frame of mind is different altogether. And I think that when I was performing, I was always in top shape. It was basically an athletic sport. You’re in your best shape you can be in for whatever it is.
But if I’m doing a movie that involves fights, I’m training more with fights. If it’s motorcycles, I’m riding my motorcycle every day, depending on what it is you’re training for that specific movie or those stunts. But in general, like yoga, meditating, all that kind of stuff, always the thing that helped me out a lot was the visualization.
If I’m going to do a high fall or something, I want to know in my body how I want to twist and land. I’ve done it a thousand times before I ever did the first one in my head. And I think that is extremely valuable. And I try to tell my daughter now when she’s playing soccer, I said, “Visualize kicking the ball into the goal, go to sleep thinking about that.” It really works. It’s a valuable thing. And that’s part of that whole mental space, I think.
And keeping yourself healthy within that and trying not to get caught up in, oh my God, why would I say yes to this? Some big stunt, you’re kind of going, what did I get myself into? But being able to step through that nervousness and oftentimes a little bit of nervousness helps your performance. I learned that early on doing a lot of live shows because it’s live. There’s no cut, let’s go again. You’re just doing it whether it’s fights or jousting or whatever it is. So you kind of learn to push through any nervousness. But yeah, I definitely think the visualization helps a ton.
It’s nice to see more awards recognition for stunt artists and even people encouraging the Academy to finally make a new awards category. Plus, with The Fall Guy and Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, the latter of which you worked on, there are these loving portrayals of your community. How do these more public accolades for your community feel?
You know what? It’s a really interesting question because when I came into the business, your job was to not say anything. Your job was always to portray the actor and make everybody believe that it was the actor doing whatever it was. There were no accolades, really. I think now that people are getting recognized for their work.
So it’s nice to see people get recognized for that. And I truly think that it is a skill and it should be recognized through the academy. And this is amazing, this Fallout nomination. I’m very honored to be a part of it and being on Jonah’s team and Amazon’s team and to have the recognition and to show your work, a lot of work, not just mine, all the other nominees and everyone else that’s putting content up and doing stunts.
So to get recognition I think is very important and to show the audience what it takes to do that. I know the behind the scenes stuff is very interesting to a lot of people. And that’s why when you see the behind the scenes footage of making a movie, it’s very interesting because people don’t know what necessarily goes through it. For instance, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, the dog attack, they trained for a month with these pit bulls that do all this stuff.
My wife Kimberly Murphy, she was part of that. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. There’s a lot of trust in the trainers, there’s a lot of trust in the animals, and it’s a lot of stuff that you have to go through. But to see the recognition I think is really, really nice.
Honestly, when you see a movie and you see a trailer, 90% of the time it’s stunt stuff. Even if it doesn’t involve stunts. If it’s a drama or whatever, there’s some sort of stunt in the trailer, a car sliding or whatever it is, it sells the movies. And so, to be recognized is important. I do agree with it, and I think it’s nice to show some appreciation for everyone’s hard work.
Fallout is available to stream on Prime.
