Millie Bobby Brown continues to make career choices that extend beyond the reach of Stranger Things. Between Enola Holmes, Godzilla vs. Kong and the upcoming Netflix film Damsel, the actress is going full-throttle on pursuing leading lady status, and that energy extends to her own stunt work.
Proving herself to be a Tom Cruise or Chris Hemsworth in the making, Brown is taking on more action-packed roles. Damsel, a film starring Brown as a princess trapped in a cave with a fire-breathing dragon, might be her most stunt-heavy project yet, but just how involved is Millie Bobby Brown in performing her own stunts?
Did Millie Bobby Brown perform all of her own Damsel stunts?
By all accounts, Millie Bobby Brown appears to have performed her own stunts while filming Damsel. In a promotional video uploaded to Netflix’s social media, the actress admits to doing all of her stunts “from start to finish.” The clip shows Brown in a harness, being lifted by cranes and propelled on fast-paced dollies, and moving in the air on wires. She is also seen scaling high set pieces, and performing somersaults on trampolines. In one clip, Brown advises that she “will vomit” if she’s made to perform a “roly poly.”
Brown says the climbing scenes were the most difficult stunts to perform, but that she was still “confident” shooting at those lofty heights. In other interviews, Brown has discussed how her rock climbing days as a child helped her shoot some scenes for Damsel, but that even those experiences couldn’t prepare her for the long hours of stunt work. The climbing scenes would sometimes stretch on for 12 hours, and Brown would finish her shoot days with “different bruises and injuries.”
Brown described one stunt in which she was made to jump from one cave to another, which made her dog — who was on set that day — let out a “yelp” because she thought Brown was “going to die.” Brown has described the stunt work on Damsel as “very physically demanding,” but said she had never been challenged on a film set like that before. “I feel like I am a warrior,” Brown gushed.
Damsel is the latest in a string of films in which Brown has performed her own stunts. On Enola Holmes, the actress did stunt work that included fight scenes, lots of running, and being “thrown up against a wall about 15 times.” As for Stranger Things, the star revealed that not much stunt work is required, since Eleven “does everything by the tips of her fingers and ‘raaaaah!’ something flies.”
In 2022, Brown said she might be more discerning when opting to do her own stunts for future roles, saying she is “getting to more of an age where I’m more protective over my body.” In any case, fans will get to see how all of Brown’s stunt work plays out in Damsel, which hits Netflix screens on March 8.
Published: Mar 5, 2024 07:52 pm