Tribeca Film Festival

Not many professional actresses in the film industry can boast that they are also an award-winning stuntwoman, and a film producer. The beautiful and charismatic Kiwi actress/stuntwoman/producer Zoe Bell started her career as a gymnast in New Zealand and later became a stuntwoman for TV’s ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ and 'Hercules' and for films including ‘Kill Bill’ Vol. 1&2, ‘Inglorious Bastards’ and ‘Django Unchained’. She has now turned her career to focus mainly on acting, having recently starred in films like ‘Oblivion’ (2013) and the explicit thriller ‘Raze’ (2013), which made its world premier at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

While working on ‘Raze’, Bell choreographed many of the stunts as well as produced the film. ‘Raze’ has been deemed a mix between 'Fight Club and ‘Hostel’, starring Zoe Bell, Rachel Nichols, Sherilyn Fenn and a cameo by Rosario Dawson. Bell plays ‘Sabrina’, a woman who has been abducted along with fifty others. In an enclosed space with an unseen audience, these women find themselves in a primal state of survival where they will stop at nothing to protect themselves and the ones they love.   

I interviewed Zoe Bell during the Tribeca Film Festival. Here is what she had to say:

ME: Your career as a stunt woman from shows like ‘Xena’ and ‘Hercules’ led you to double for Uma Thurman in ‘Kill Bill’ vol 1&2, ‘Inglorious Basterds’, and many more. You later starred in Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ and went on to act in a number of films, most recently 'Oblivion' and 'Raze'. Do you consider yourself a stuntwoman more than an actress or both equally?

ZOE: It’s like when I was a gymnast; I still kind of identify with it a little bit. The transitioning into acting is happening already, which is cool, but at the moment it’s been more transitioning into producing, which I love. I feel like they’re all branches of the same tree.

ME: Recently, you have started to take on more acting roles than stunt work. Do you think you will continue to mainly act now?

ZOE: Yes. I occasionally do stunt work but it’s usually for someone that I know or have a professional relationship with, or if there is a particular stunt that I really want to do, but yes for the most part. To be honest, the reason for me to start turning down stunt work over acting work was not because I don’t like doing stunt work but because it’s more about changing departments in the industry is a difficult bridge to cross. Even for myself, it took a while for me to associate myself as an actor so for myself psychologically I had to step outside of being a stunt person into being an actor.

ME: Is it as psychologically demanding as physical to be a stuntwoman?

ZOE: I think when I first started I found it far more psychologically demanding because I didn’t have the professional skill set to deal with it and I also didn’t have the innate confidence that comes with experience. So, the first six months on ‘Xena’ I was constantly self-doubting and second-guessing and every time they said ‘cut, let’s do it again’, I assumed it was because I screwed it up. But now when I’ve screwed up I know I’ve screwed up and when I’ve got it right I know I’ve got it right. I feel fear like any other human does, but I guess over the years I’ve just acquired the technique of processing that fear or putting it aside or making the performance side of it more important. Getting the stunt right becomes more important than the fear of hurting myself.

ME: You were at Tribeca with your new film ‘Raze’, which you acted in as well as produced. What drew you to this project and how has this journey been?

ZOE: What drew me to it originally was the director, Josh Waller, who has been a friend of mine for many years. He reached out to me saying he wanted to do this project. It was originally intended to be maybe a web-series or a short or a series of shorts. We weren’t really sure. They suggested that if I was interested I could come aboard as a producer so that I had some creative insight because it was female action and they felt that was my area of expertise. And to be honest, I loved the idea, which to me sounded cool and fascinating. And the concept of being a producer on it was really appealing to me. I’ve had a TV show that I’ve been developing and playing around with, but until now I’ve only ever been in front of the camera. So, pre-production, post-production, anything that was office space was just not in my realm of experience and I really wanted it to be because I always wondered how I could get a TV show made. Being a producer, it was a great way to learn. The best way to learn is on set. This was a small project with great people; it just snow-balled and it just kept getting bigger faster and people started coming aboard and I thought, ‘oh my god, I think we’re making a feature film!!’ It was really exciting. I hate the word ‘organic’ because I feel like society has just completely overused it and makes it sound far more wanky than it should but the process, although difficult and super challenging at times, had a feeling of being organic because it just kept rolling over into the next thing.

ME: In ‘Raze’, the women are abducted. Are they taking their anger out on each other or is there a greater enemy they are fighting against?

ZOE: There were discussions about all this stuff as we went along, but we kind of felt that if we make that the message we might be pushing it because the reality is if these women could band together to fight the enemy, they would, but the enemy is smarter than that so the way they set it up was that there was no time or place where we could get together before we knew what was going on. There are loads of different messages that each of us producers all read into it and project into because we’re all different and because the other guys are men. A big part of it was that these women in their own life have been quite strong or capable, powerful individuals, and now they’re in a situation where they’re completely powerless to deal with it how they normally would. You know, like the kind of people that would normally bow down and let someone else kill them or let win can’t because then their loved ones would die. Or the kind of person who would try to escape won’t because they don’t want their loved ones to die.

ZOE CONT'D: It’s also the message of the art of the female fight. Women are different than men so women don’t go to a pub, have some beers and start looking for a fight; it’s not the genetic make-up of women. You hear stories of women lifting cars off their children; we wanted to play with that so that the fight became visceral and real and women watching. I wanted this to be a movie that women would not necessarily enjoy watching, but get something out of watching. I didn’t want this to be a movie for men, which is why we tried to stay clear of women fighting in bras and undies because not many women are going to be drawn to watching that. We’re obviously a genre movie but we just wanted to see if we could do something different and have it work.

ME: The film is being pitched as a cross between ‘Hostel’ and ‘Fight Club’. Do you think this film will create a new genre?

ZOE: The reference to ‘Fight Club’ came around when no one had seen the movie, so that was based only the trailer. I loved ‘Fight Club’ but that was a voluntary club and the people have all chosen to be there for whatever reason. But with the case of these women they have had no choice. Their choice is to let their loved one die or not. I think what’s interesting and what I haven’t seen a lot of in this genre of movies is the lack of heightened fantastical-ness of it. These women are in sweats and white tanks, not bikinis. They’re not fighting just because they can. They’re not wearing heels, there are no weapons and none of us are weapons experts.

ME: What is it about fighting with bare hands and physical animal-like wrestling that is such a release for people? Is it primal and maybe even sexual pent up energy that has been repressed for so long that it’s just aching to be released again? And is this essentially what 'Raze' is about?

ZOE: That’s what we were going for. The type of fighting I’ve never done was women fighting from an emotional, purposeful, painful traumatic place. I’ve got nothing against hot chicks in heels and big hair and push up bras beating each other up. I’ve done my fair share of it and I love doing it, but this is something I’ve never done. It was an interesting way to get a different spin out of a genre that’s been done for years and years. That’s where we were coming from, to give it the sensibility of a less genre movie but being from the realm of women literally in prison and women fighting to the death. But yet it’s still a genre film somehow.

ZOE CONT’D: We have Doug Jones in the film playing ‘Joseph’. You can’t really judge yourself as good or bad because no one really judges their self that way, and yet there’s him being justified as right. So, he doesn’t see himself as evil. When you see him and his wife, his relationship with her is genuine. When asked about his character, Doug said that his character thinks he’s doing amazing things for women because he appreciates and respects the ability to fight to the death for someone they love, and that’s something he really thinks is amazing and respectable, and that’s why he’s doing it. Of course it doesn’t quite feel like that to the women downstairs.

ZOE CONT’D: Society feels like it’s doing something good because it’s giving these women the permission to express their animalistic aggression and territorial protectiveness. They feel like they’re giving them permission to do that because in normal societies you’re not allowed to. And it’s sort of sickly refreshing to see this women making these decisions because these two strangers both have an appreciation moment for each other but they’re both fighting for exactly the same reasons; they’re both fighting to protect someone they love and that means that one of them must die. I guess on a great scale, it’s like a lot of wars are based on religion and they all stem from the right place but often end up way past it where people forget why they were fighting in the first place, but at one point they’re both fighting for kind of the same reason, and the irony ends up resulting in them not being able to see each other and being the same.

ME: ‘The road to hell is paved by good intentions', right?’

ZOE: Exactly. I think what’s really interesting between Teresa and Cody was that moment when there was a decision made when they had to decide if their side was worth fighting for more than the life of the other person, and the appreciation that they both are both on the same side even though they’re on opposite sides of the ring.

ME: What has it been like to premier at Tribeca and how have audiences responded at Tribeca during your premier?

ZOE: This is very important for me because I’m really quite excitable and I love to get in on it so it’s hard for me if people don’t find it amazing because I hate getting excited about something and others end up not being excited. But the response was awesome. It was really satisfying for me sitting in the audience and hearing them cheer physically out loud at times we wanted them to and laugh at times we had put in humor. You know, you have to have humor in those things, especially if we want to portray real life, because often the most sad traumatized times, you find yourself laughing at dumb stuff because it’s the only way to deal with it. One of the characters, Sabrina, appears as a villain early on but we wanted the audience to get behind Sabrina. At one point there’s a fight between Sabrina and one of the girls and when the audience knew the fight was coming, they were all pumped for it and cheering and it was just so exciting for us to know we had done our job in that way. We’re still waiting for the reviews, but we’re all so proud. It was a hard road and to see our baby come out fully polished and finished and have audiences loving it has been a really moving experience.

ME: You’re involved with a lot of other projects at the moment. Would you like to mention anything about them?

ZOE: Well, I’m fully in ‘Raze’ mode at the moment. There’s another movie coming up called: ‘The Devil’s Ink’ which has some of the same people from ‘Raze’ that’s still in pre-production, but I can’t wait for that movie. There’s a couple of others floating around. ‘Douglas Brown’ is another one that I shot; that’ll be a cute little movie. ‘Oblivion’, obviously just came out too. I’m really enjoying doing indie movies because they’re sort of family-based and everyone’s in it for the same kind of reason and clearly not about money. I’ve been really enjoying that. My intention is to start producing more movies, producing action movies. There’s heaps of stuff I don’t know and I’m learning every day because it is a jump to the other side of this industry, but I really like being part of the collaborating process and the originating process.

Interview by Vanessa McMahon; April 29, 2013.

View the trailer and official site for 'Raze' (2013) here: http://razethemovie.com/