USA Stunt News
Freddie Poole Breaks Down the “Dirtiest” Season of Stunts on Tulsa King Season 3
Posted: June 20, 2026
Two-time Emmy-nominated stunt coordinator Freddie Poole — who has doubled Sylvester Stallone for fifteen years and also served as 2nd unit director on Season 3 of Paramount+'s Tulsa King — talked to TV Obsessive about scaling the show's action while keeping it in character. Poole's framing for the season is "raw, visceral, dirty": the fighting style is deliberately a brawl, not martial arts or tactical gunplay (only the character Mitch reads as military-trained), because the Dixie-Mafia world doesn't support technical choreography. The pieces he singles out are instructive for coordinators working tight episodic schedules: the cabin fight between Mitch and Cole was previs'd and rehearsed with the stunt team first, then the cast was dialed in; and the Episode 8 hotel explosion had to be split across two shoots — the live downtown location (where no pyro was allowed, and a passing trolley repeatedly halted production for safety) and a separate stage day for the pyro. Poole calls that sequence a "three-headed attack" of stunts, SFX, and VFX, made workable by having the same stunt, special-effects, and VFX department heads across all three seasons — he plans wirework knowing VFX will rotoscope his stunt double into position, and runs SFX tests inside the previs rather than separately. With production needing him on set for episodes 7 and 8, he brought in 2nd unit director Chris O'Hara to cover the big cinematic shootout. He also recounted operating the camera himself, rigged 60 feet up on a wire, to shoot a rooftop-kick fall on a recent South Carolina feature — chasing the falling stunt double through frame for a profile shot rather than the standard cut-to-sky coverage.
Source: TV Obsessive — Freddie Poole Breaks Down Dirtiest Season of Stunts for Tulsa King
Stunt Coordinators Name the Best TV Stunts of 2026 — Fallout, FBI, The Hunting Wives, Murdaugh, Pluribus
Posted: June 18, 2026
IndieWire’s craft desk polled working stunt coordinators and second unit directors on the small-screen action that impressed them this year, and the through-line is craft over spectacle: the work they singled out is the work that reads as grounded and practically executed. John Koyama (The Boys) called out the wire reactions on Fallout Season 2 and the final season of Stranger Things for selling superhuman impacts that destroy set pieces while the performer stays inside a heavy, complex costume. On the procedural side, Christopher Place (2nd unit, Dexter: Resurrection) praised Victor Paguia’s FBI team for carrying a heavier stunt load every season — including a fight thrown from a big-rig truck shot in below-freezing temperatures by the rigging team, drivers, and performers. Andy Rusk (The Lowdown) flagged David Morizot’s bone-felt beatings on Murdaugh: A Death in the Family and Al Goto’s sheer volume of body hits on Pluribus, and put Chelsea Bruland’s work on The Hunting Wives — a U-Haul-trailer car chase run by a one-person stunt department on late-model cars with modern safety electronics, with stunt double Heather Hayes on the action — alongside the best of the year. Rob Inch (2nd unit, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Alien: Earth) summed up the standard: keep it “really gritty without trying too hard.”
Source: IndieWire — The Best TV Shows for Stunts in 2026, According to Stunt Coordinators
Stunt Performer Loses Thumb in Rehearsal-Prep Accident on Star Wars: Starfighter
Posted: June 18, 2026
A stunt performer on Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter suffered a serious hand injury — losing a thumb — in December 2025 while preparing a gag, when their hand was caught against a piece of machinery during the build-and-prep phase rather than during a take. Production paused so the performer could receive medical treatment, then resumed quickly to hold its schedule; the performer is reported to have recovered. For coordinators and riggers, it is a reminder that the rehearsal-and-rigging window — fitting performers to mechanical rigs and testing equipment before cameras roll — carries as much risk as the stunt itself. The incident, on the UK-based Lucasfilm shoot, only surfaced publicly six months later through the British press. No stunt coordinator credit has been confirmed for the production.
Source: ComingSoon — Star Wars: Starfighter Production Hit by Stunt Performer Injury
David Leitch Elected to Academy Board of Governors With Stunt Design Oscar on the Runway to 2028
Posted: June 15, 2026
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences elected its 2026–2027 Board of Governors on June 15, and the name that matters for the stunt department is David Leitch, who takes one of three seats in the newly expanded Production and Technology Branch for a one-year term. Leitch — the stunt performer and coordinator who became the director of The Fall Guy — was the primary voice (with producing partner Kelly McCormick) who walked the Stunt Design Oscar through the Academy and onto the calendar for 2028. The branch expansion (from one seat to three) and Leitch's seat at the table change the math on whose interests get advocated for inside the building between now and the first ceremony with stunts on the card. The Production and Technology Branch is where craft decisions about category eligibility, rules, and submission process get shaped before they get voted; having a coordinator-turned-director sitting on those discussions during the runway year is meaningful for how the new category gets defined.
Source: Deadline — Guillermo del Toro, David Leitch, Others Elected to Motion Picture Academy Board · IndieWire — Guillermo del Toro, David Leitch, and More Join Academy Board of Governors as First-Time Members · Variety — Academy Elects Expanded 60-Member Film Academy Board of Governors · Academy Press Office — The Academy Elects 2026–2027 Board of Governors
How the Fallout Stunt Team Brought Deathclaws and Power Armor to Life in Season 2
Posted: June 15, 2026
Stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director Casey O'Neill talked to TheWrap about putting together the action for Prime Video's Fallout Season 2 — specifically the two creature-suit problems that defined the season: the Brotherhood of Steel power armor worn by Maximus (Aaron Moten), and the Deathclaws prowling around New Vegas. The power armor weighs roughly 100 pounds and is built around a single specific performer, who then has to hit fights and wirework while keeping the suit's mannerisms consistent enough for the audience to read a personality through the armor. The Deathclaws are physical builds from Legacy Effects (the Stan Winston lineage shop) with a stunt performer inside, and on screen they're a stack of wirework, puppeteering, VFX, and the stunt team's choreography layered on the same shot — O'Neill's job is making sure the creature reads as a character and not a costume. He also flagged the schedule problem most stunt coordinators on streaming would recognize: Fallout dropped Season 2 a year after Season 1, which means the rehearsal-and-overlap math gets tight as the production machine speeds up. O'Neill is already in prep on Season 3.
Source: TheWrap — How the 'Fallout' Stunt Team Gave Deathclaws and Mech Suits Personality
SAG-AFTRA Members Ratify 2026 TV/Theatrical Deal, Stunt Residuals Committee and Outsized Stunt Rate Bumps Among the Gains
Posted: June 9, 2026
SAG-AFTRA's membership overwhelmingly approved the 2026 TV/Theatrical Contracts tentative agreement on June 9, locking in a four-year successor to the deal that expires June 30. Reading the agreement from the stunt-department side, three items are worth flagging. First, the parties agreed to form a committee to study mechanisms for residuals on "off-camera" stunt performers and the obstacles to implementing them — a long-running ask that has finally made it onto the table in writing, even if a number didn't. Second, the schedule break amounts increased across the board, with outsized increases for a newly created schedule break that applies only to stunt performers engaged under multiple-picture or multiple-episode contracts. Third, the Section 25 overtime money breaks on the TV Agreement got their own outsized increases for stunt performers on weekly multiple-picture/episode deals. The committee's work won't pay out before the next negotiation cycle, but the new schedule breaks and overtime increases land on day one of the new contract.
Source: SAG-AFTRA — Members Approve 2026 TV/Theatrical Contracts Tentative Agreement · SAG-AFTRA Member Services — What Gains Were Made for Stunt Performers and Stunt Coordinators in the 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement · SHOOTonline — SAG-AFTRA Members Approve 4-Year TV/Theatrical Agreement
Utah Native Katelynn Olson Books Her First Stunt Performer Slot on Marshals
Posted: May 25, 2026
Stuntwoman Katelynn Olson profiled in the Deseret News on her path onto Marshals, the Yellowstone spinoff shooting at Thousand Peaks Ranch in Oakley, Utah. The break came the long way — camera intern, camera assistant, craft services, then certifications in fire burns and high falls through Banzai Vitale's Stunt Performers Academy in Sylmar — and the entry point onto Marshals was a craft-services emergency call at 7 a.m. the next morning. From there it was the standard route: wear the gym hat the coordinators recognize, get noticed by a series regular (Ash Santos, who lobbied for her on a one-line stunt role), self-tape against L.A. names, get put into the regular rotation by the coordinator and the director, and earn the SAG-AFTRA voucher off that work. Useful read for anyone working a regional market and trying to convert a below-the-line foothold into a stunt department slot.
Source: Deseret News — How this Utah stunt performer went from 'Studio C' to 'Marshals'
Georgia Stunt Performers on Riding Out the Slowdown — and Why They Think the Floor Is In
Posted: May 21, 2026
Atlanta News First and WRDW filed companion pieces on the state of stunt work in Georgia: direct production spend was $2.3B in FY2025 versus $4.4B at the 2022 peak, and 2026 is projected around $3B — well off the high, well off the floor. Four Atlanta-based performers (Dean Grimes among them) describe the post-strike landscape from the stunt-department side: long gaps, harder competition for the work that is shooting, and the usual Trilith pipeline finally restarting. The take from the people doing the work is that the trend line is up, not down, and that the Georgia base — gyms, doubles, riggers, second-unit crews — has held together through the lean stretch. Worth tracking if Atlanta is on your booking radar for the back half of the year.
Source: Atlanta News First — Georgia stunt performers navigate film industry slowdown, but see turnaround coming · WRDW — Ga. stunt performers navigate film industry slowdown, see turnaround coming
