Zoe Bell (Xena stunt double) and
Paul Grinder (2nd unit director)

Zoe Bell and Paul Grinder did a short, but very neat, presentation of some of the behind-the-scenes work on the show. The crowd was first shown a video of some of the second unit work, which apparently consists mostly of practice shots and lots of careful camera placement. We got to see a lot of the shots from the show shown from farther back so we could see where cameras were placed, too.

Zoe, one of the Lucy's stunt doubles, walked onto the stage in her Xena wig, which she quickly took off to show her shoulder-length blonde hair. Paul, the second unit director, declared that they "don't do much talking," so they would get right to their plan - to bring up a bunch of fans to teach them how to do stunt Xena and Gabrielle fighting moves. They brought a few stunt swords and sais with them, and taught each successive person a move we've all seen a few dozen times, like a sword twirl or a sai block, and then Zoe would "sell" being the bad guy who was hit. Paul would occasionally break in to "direct" and have the fan beef up the move a bit more. I officially envy those few who got a turn to play up there.

In between directing, Paul answered a few questions and told a few stories. In spite of his earlier disclaimer about not talking, he told some great tidbits about the set. He said there are actually 6-7 Xena doubles (and presumably about that many Gabrielles): a stunt double (Zoe), body doubles, riding doubles, stunt riding doubles, and "polite nudity doubles."

When the second unit is filming in the same place as the main unit, Paul told a story to demonstrate how confusing it can be with 6-7 Xenas running around. He said one of the makeup artists saw a Xena playing with Julius, who he assumed was Lucy. When he strolled outside, he saw another Xena - must be one of his double friends - and therefore snuck up behind her and bit her on the arm. All Paul and the others on the set knew was that the artist showed up in front of them white as ghost ("We thought a family member had died") and declared "I've just bitten Lucy!"

According to another story, Lucy also has her fun on the crew, too. One of the crew members had jokingly offered to eat a huge earthworm they had found crawling on one of their locations in exchange for $200, which he was sure the crew would never be able to produce. Sure enough, the crew was only able to scrape together a small amount of money, until they heard a polite "ahem-hem-hem" behind them. Lucy promptly produced the rest of the cash to make the $200 and the crew member was stuck with eating a six inch long earthworm.

Zoe got a chance in between ducks, dodges, and falls to answer a couple of questions, too. She said most of the stunt crew has a background in martial arts (especially ones that involve a lot of leg work for all those kicks) or dance. Zoe herself has a belt (red?) in Tae Kwon Do.

According to Zoe, the hardest part of the stunt work is the metal harness that the stunties wear when you see things like "Lucy jumps and does 19 flips and lands in Japan." The worst episode ever for involving lots of harness work was Fallen Angel. "I don't think I'll be having kids," Zoe declared, after all those hours in that harness.

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