- We transformed into superheros.
- Then we learned the history of superheros.
- And today we're bringing in a badass stunt coordinator
to teach us how to fight like superheros.
- It's Ladylike, and this week,
we're putting superhero costumes to the test.
(thundering)
- This week we have a stunt coordinator named Gowrie Hayden
coming in to teach us the choregraphy
behind our favorite fight scenes.
- We're gonna put these superhero costumes to the test
and see if they can actually withstand
the stunts that people are supposed to do
while wearing them.
- You bring in someone to teach us how to fight,
to train us to get ready for a big mission,
that's like a love story.
- Superhero costumes are intense, but it makes sense
because superheros are intense.
They're supposed to be super human.
And it often looks cumbersome.
I.E. Iron Man.
How does anyone move in a suit that heavy
and that robotic.
- I'm nervous about recreating this 10 second fight scene
with all of the latex and leather and leg moves.
Can you see my leg?
- Superhero costumes are like if lingerie
and a wet suit had a baby.
- Superhero costumes can just be frustrating
because they tend to accentuate body parts sometimes
in ways that don't make sense.
- A lot of wrapped in plastic.
She's like a Barbie that fights.
If you did this all day,
you'd probably hear a lot of squeaking.
- I do think the women's costumes
have a bit more zhoosh.
You know, just like a bit more ooh!
- You get like a little side boob
or like a little bit like your butt is kinda lifted.
It just makes the body look incredible.
- I'm gonna be fighting like Wonder Woman,
and Wonder Woman's costume is very like, hoo.
The bodice of it is pretty restrictive.
Even though she's pretty exposed,
she still is very covered in just
things that you wouldn't normally be wearing.
- Batwoman sort of looks like a Christmas tree decoration.
Her costume seems pretty okay,
it's a lot of spandex.
- Storm has a specific costume for the fight scene
that I'm gonna recreate.
It's kind of like a latex leathery one piece.
I'm nervous about the leather latex material,
but I think I'm even more nervous about the cape.
It just moves behind her as she's fighting,
and I just know I'm gonna get tangled.
I don't understand how she doesn't get tangled in it.
- I appreciate that at least She-Hulk's costume
has some stretchiness to it
because I think that's a little bit more practical.
- We were Jean Gray kind of like in her Phoenix stage.
In my fight scene, she's just kind of concentrating
and creating this like vacuum of weather and wind,
and she's looking fucking fly.
She's not really wearing her costume,
so we're just gonna throw it on just for shits and giggles.
- She-Hulk is kinda jumping and punching and kicking
and like, you know, kind of like
moving all of her arms and limbs at once.
I generally don't like to move more than two limbs at once,
if I can help it.
Maybe I'll be good at, no.
- From what I can tell,
the fight scene that I'll be emulating
is a lot of like swift punches.
I would say that her fighting style
is very martial arts influenced.
(short exhales)
- Wonder Woman is incredibly active,
and no body move is too hard for her to do.
But I'm gonna try.
- The way that Storm uses her superpowers
are usually through her fingertips
and also just like through her eyes,
but she does specialize in hand to hand combat,
and that's the scene that I'm gonna be recreating.
- I think it's gonna be great.
I think we're gonna have a good time.
I think there's gonna be some punchy punchies
and some kicky kickies.
- Ooh, I'm so excited to work with the stunt coordinator.
And it's a lady?
- I don't know that she has fully realized
that none of us know how to fight
in any sort of capacity.
- I anticipate an injury, a light injury.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
- It's gonna be a doozer.
Let's kick our own butts!
- Oh my god, today is the day.
I can't believe that we're actually here right now.
- I feel good, I'm ready.
I have some built up aggression.
- I wore a sports bra in preparation of this day.
- Everyone is razzing me because they thought
I'd be wearing a dress today,
but I read the call sheet, I know what we're doing.
- I think it's gonna be great,
and I think it's gonna be a really fun time.
Hopefully nobody gets hurt,
but if they do,
whatever, we're getting free lunch.
- Two, three, four, unh!
- Hey, I'm Gowrie Hayden,
and I'm an actress, stunt fighter,
and fight coordinator.
Today we are gonna take five amazing ladies,
and sorta make a dream come true.
Our hope is that everyone is gonna rock this out,
which I'm confident they will.
And showcasing their talents,
and what it takes to be a strong, powerful woman.
- [All] Hi, Gowrie!
- Hi, ladies!
There's so much awesome, female energy in the room today.
- How often do you, like, get hurt?
Not in terms of, like, hurt like injured,
but hurt just like, "Ow, that hurt!"
- Ideally, no one ever gets hurts,
but of course little nicks and scrapes happen.
- What is like the stunt industry like?
Is it mostly male dominated?
Are there a lot of other women like you working?
- That top tier of stunt coordinators,
A-list people, are predominately men,
but there's certainly plenty of female stunt coordinators
in the business now, as well,
which is one of the beautiful things
about the new Wonder Woman movie,
is that there were so many women getting a chance
to be strong and fierce and fight.
- [All] Yeah!
- Alright, you ready to do some moving?
You ready to do some fighting?
So, let's start out with just getting our bodies
nice and loose, do a little stretching.
- [Jen] I'm already in pain.
(laughing)
- [Kristin] My back is popping nicely.
- Okay, good, that's great.
There's so many little things
that go into learning how to fight
and learning how to perform a fight
that your brain can just get overloaded.
(laughing)
- [Gowrie] Perfect!
- Like, I was already tired from the stretching,
so I was like, "This is gonna be
"a very long and difficult day."
But it was so fun.
- We all had a decent amount of time to sort of practice,
and not perfect, but just get our bodies
used to those movements.
(grunting)
(cheering)
- Kicking and shouting generally aren't things
that I am allowed to do in my work life,
but they are frequently things I wish I could do.
So, this was a welcome change.
- I'm not very flexible!
It was actually really hard, I struggled a lot.
I feel like it's really hard for me to do a lot of this
without feeling like I'm gonna fall over.
- I think my favorite part was Chantel and I
practicing punching each other in the face.
- So, it's legs,
boom, torso.
- I'm almost sad that I'm not fighting.
I'm mentally fighting in my scene.
- Even just like learning to like memorize the sequence
I think is gonna be tough.
So, throwing the movement on top of it
is gonna be something really fun and really challenging.
- Super excited to work with all of you one on one.
Again, it's just an amazing group of women.
Great energy, and that always makes it fun all around
because that's what it's all about.
Ki-yah, you ready, ladies?
- [All] Yeah!
- [Gowrie] One, two, three!
- [All] Ki-yah!
- I'm excited to learn all of my moves
and then use all of those things
to form just a sentence of moves.
Let's do it, let's get into it.
- The thing about She-Hulk is that
she has this massive strength.
With Kristin, it's gonna come down a lot
to a very specific technique
because she has a lot of one hit sequences
because She-Hulk is so powerful
that's all she has to do.
- The hardest part is getting my hands and my feet
to play nice and do the same thing at the same time.
- So, anytime there's a victim in choreography,
the victim's always in control.
So, when I shoot at you,
we're just gonna have you do a little cape block,
and come in with a right cross.
- I am struggling to keep up with all of it,
and if you don't do it right,
not only will it look bad,
but you'll probably like hurt somebody really badly.
- So, she drops in that epic pose, shield is up.
So then, you come up,
you've done your epic Wonder Woman pose,
bullets are blazing.
The tricky part for her is that
she is blocking invisible bullets,
and so to get really, really specific
in her mind and her body
about visualizing where those bullets are coming from
and exactly the point on the shield and her arm
that she's blocking those bullets with.
So, I have those first two moves.
I'm gonna do a right cross, you're gonna get hit.
- My villain hits me in the face
and then also roundhouse kicks me in the stomach,
and I have to make it look realistic
without anticipating what she's gonna do.
- The biggest thing for Freddie right now, I think,
is just feeling more natural, getting in her body
when she's taking hits and punches.
- Right cross.
- Turn. - I'm spinning.
- [Gowrie] Spin, spin, sugar.
- Spinning, spinning, spinning.
- [Gowrie] Stop, prep this left hand to go,
and then--
- Back around.
- Yep. - Okay.
- When you're fighting as a character,
sometimes it's about finding out
what that vocalization is for your specific character.
So, for She-Hulk, it's obviously not gonna be
a ki-yah like in martial arts,
and her new word is "snacks."
(grunting)
I'm so gonna try to come back.
And you're gonna just--
- Snacks!
(laughing)
- Just in general, I walk on my toes,
and I've been like that since I was a kid,
but it does throw off my balance a lot.
- When you have somebody that constantly
wants to be up on their toes,
just having that extra weight around their waist
can help, sort of, bring their center of gravity down
and let them live in their legs a little bit more.
- The moves need to be second nature,
so that I can sell how smooth they are.
- Down in her epic Wonder Woman pose!
Oh hey, I meet guys with guns.
Bang, bang, bang.
And then you do your tornado spin.
And then you're just gonna clock me in the face.
It's all new stuff for everyone,
and what most people, the general public, doesn't realize
is that just learning how to fight, period,
is a difficult thing.
And then memorizing a combination,
getting your body to do it without thinking about it,
there's so much that goes into these fight scenes.
- I think the hard part for me
is going to be to stop thinking
and just start punching.
- I think once I know the moves a little bit better,
I'll be able to leave my head behind.
- Gowrie was a great teacher, she's super patient,
and I just wanna make her proud!
- Snacks!
- So, the message of the day is,
"Don't fuck with Kristin!"
Does anyone have some Tylenol?
- So, yesterday, Gowrie came in like a storm, ha.
And taught us all of these amazing moves.
- I need some coffee and a big slap in the face.
Now, I feel like I'm going to be able
to get both of those today.
- My back muscles are a little soreish.
- Okay so, I had homework and I forgot.
- I know I should've done my homework,
but we have two hours with Gowrie today.
Hopefully I can at least look decent
by the end of the two hours.
- I'm excited to get my second round with Gowrie going,
and I'm hoping that we can all pull this together.
I think that we can.
- Today is actually my first day.
I'm like super jealous of the other girls
because I really wanted to like do more combat stuff,
but I'm gonna have to do it with my mind and my eyes.
I'm ready to sit, woo!
- Alright, great, day two, Freddie, how you feeling?
- Day two, I'm ready, I'm pumped!
- She is ready and pumped!
Storm is ready to unleash her fury,
her fists of fury. - Yes.
- It's just really nailing the technique
on every single one hit wonder
that you have coming my way,
and then we'll work through some stuff for camera,
so they got the shot list,
and we rock it.
- My scene is not really one scene, per say.
It's actually just a bunch of moves
from kind of the same scene spliced together
because I can't fly.
And I also can't do back flips.
- Okay, so I'm gonna be kicking off our Ladylike storyline.
Jean Grey's scene's gonna be coming first.
Hold on to your butts.
- So, we had to really intensely
sit down across from each other,
and work on the power of telekinesis.
- You know, and again, this is the biggest
difficulty of all this, is just really keeping in mind,
like, all of the little reminders that I have.
Don't go up on your toe,
like, don't kick with your knee.
I have to remember the target is up here, not down there.
- Get lower, sell up those legs.
- Working two more hours with Gowrie,
I really feel a lot better about it.
- Freddie's doing great.
She's doing what a lot of people do,
where they try to help their partner or be nice
because they're afraid they're gonna actually hit
the other person, which is me.
It's just getting her out of her head
and trust that the system works
and that she isn't going to actually clock me in the face.
So, once I get her to that point,
which we were pretty close to today,
and then she can just let her body do the work.
- I'm gonna turn.
- Turn, turn, turn.
- Other one!
(laughing)
- And the spins, she need to work on the spins.
Kristin did really well.
Her fight's a little bit different
because she just has single, one hit moves,
as opposed to big combinations.
Villain number two comes in,
you front kick.
- Snacks! - Snacks.
You have to have to say snacks
before everything now. - I have to say snacks.
Yeah, I know.
- She's not like as nice as everyone thinks she's,
oh shit.
(yelling)
- So, Devin and I had to really dig deep.
This was probably one of my more exhausting sessions.
Getting her strength up to the point
where she felt confident in her gift,
that she could then move my chair.
When it really happened,
I think everyone here on set was like,
"Whoa!"
(yelling)
- Just some flapping.
- Yeah, just do this.
- I did it!
I'm still kinda struggling with my kicks a little bit.
I don't have that much flexibility,
and I have a tendency to go up on my toes still.
- I think if she keeps working at it
and really just takes her time, takes a deep breath,
it's just gonna look great tomorrow.
Bang, bang!
Keep turning faster!
You gotta turn faster, you're Wonder Woman!
She's speedy!
- My homework for tonight is to go home
and rehearse intention behind my hits
and also just to be hunkered down to the ground.
- We're cooking up a pretty good storyline for y'all.
I can't wait for you guys to see it.
- I have a lot of pride in my noises and in my fists,
so I wanna do a good job.
- I feel a lot more confident.
I think the practice is paying off.
The day of is tomorrow,
so either I get it or I don't, and I look,
either it looks cool or it doesn't.
- Let's get into full garb and fight like superheros.
(beeping)
(intense music)
- [Gowrie] Jean, don't do this!
(crunching)
- [Devin] Give me my snacks!
- [Gowrie] But I can help you!
- [Devin] Listen, bitch, you don't know me.
So, prepare for our wrath!
- [Gowrie] Jean, no!
(yelling)
(crashing)
(crunching)
(upbeat music)
(record skips)
(grunting)
- [Kristin] Snacks!
(grunting)
Hulk snacks!
(intense music)
(bag crinkling)
(gun shots)
(grunting)
(banging)
(grunting)
(intense music)
(gun shots)
(grunting)
(intense music)
(whistling)
(bag crinkling)
(grunting)
(electricity sizzling)
(thundering)
(intense music)
(bag crinkling)
(intense music)
- [Man] That's a cut, that was great!
- That was super fun.
It was a lot of just like fans and fake hair
blowing in my face.
I lost one set of eyelashes.
- I had a really good time doing this.
I felt good, it was, like, fun to do,
got a good workout, gonna sleep well tonight.
- I am quite sweaty, quite moist,
and my synthetic wig has had a mind of its own.
- It's definitely fun to fight in.
It adds to your character a lot,
but there are certain things that I think
you would not anticipate.
- These costumes look cool,
they make you feel like a badass,
but when it comes to fighting,
I think they're honestly pretty impractical.
- We did it, we got it in the can, so moving on.
- This was awesome!
I did things I never thought I was going to be able to do.
- The biggest obstacle in my scene,
it was pushing my wig hair like all around,
my fake eyelashes were coming off at one point,
but I had to stay concentrated,
really sell that I was doing all
these crazy things with my mind.
So, my scene was an exercise in staying focused
and not breaking character.
- It was an awesome costume!
I mean, a bathing suit is really
how you should fight anybody.
The reason why I wasn't painted green this time
is because She-Hulk is just inherently green,
she doesn't sit around for four hours
at the beginning of the day getting painted.
- I landed into a half moon of all these snacks.
Gowrie tries to shoot me, and I say,
"No, thank you, ma'am!
"I'm about to backhand you and hit you with my shield."
- I think the thing that I struggled with the most
was not only learning the moves,
but also making sure that they appeared to be realistic.
You have to spin, you have to spot,
I had to make sure that where I was hitting her was accurate
because when you're spinning,
it's easy for your arm and wrist
to kind of go out of line away from her face.
So, there were a couple of times where I spun
and, like, I hit her in the stomach
when it was supposed to be in her head.
- It wasn't too restricting in any way, necessarily,
but at the same time, it's like,
when you're wearing, like, a skintight suit,
it's not crazy comfortable to have to do kicks
or to have to move that fast.
Like, I do feel like it did impede my movement a little bit.
Also, what's really impractical,
it's like, you are not fighting with that much hair.
You do not have that much hair
and you let it loose on your back.
Like, that girl would be grabbing you by the hair
and pulling you to the ground.
- I was worried that my hair was gonna be
like flying in my face, and it didn't fly in my face,
but it did fly and stick into my armpits.
- I felt like I was gonna feel uncomfortable in my costume
or it was gonna be too much,
but, like, if I could wear that costume every day, I would.
- The costume stayed intact.
It didn't rip, it didn't do anything.
It was much more sturdy than my leather pants
at the Kanye concert.
- I think probably the best thing
is just skintight everything that's really flexible.
- The skirt is insanely short.
So, like, in the front,
you basically are just seeing, like, my underwear line,
and it's like, does it have to be this short?
Give her pants!
That being said though, it didn't get in the way at all.
- One of the main things that I learned from Gowrie
was as opposed to having a posture
that I have in every day life,
that doesn't cut it when you're trying to be a superhero.
She was like, "Women superheros,
"like, they accentuate their tits."
And learning that posture is something
that I think I'll take outside of the video
and into my every day life.
- Seeing everyone walking out in their costumes
and then just like owning all their moves,
I was like, "Yes!
"I love this, this is amazing!"
I also could not have asked for a person
as good as Gowrie.
- When you're fighting with Gowrie,
her enthusiasm for it is very contagious.
And I caught that virus very hard.
- Going into this experience,
I really didn't understand the appeal for, like, cosplay,
but now I get it.
I understand why cosplay is such a big movement
because, like, when you put on these costume pieces,
and the wig, and you look at yourself in the mirror,
it really affects your self-esteem
and how you think of yourself.
- All of Ladylike was just, like, completely onboard,
embraced their characters,
and they completely kicked ass.
- I know I didn't get to fight,
but I really did get to fight.
And my powers.
And if you're not careful,
if you don't look away from the screen,
I might make you do something that I want you to do.
Okay, I really just made it weird.
- [Chantal] Oh, shit!
- [Devin] I just made it weird.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)