- [Director] Action!
(loud crash)
(giggling)
Cut!
- [Woman] How do you giggle your way out of that?
(laughter)
- Doing "Kill Bill", Quentin's big thing for me was
when you're in the costume and you're in front of the camera
you are part of the bride, you ARE the bride.
And it was sort of something I think I'd always believed
but I'd never verbalized or heard it verbalized,
it's not Zoe doing this on set,
it's not Zoe getting this attention,
it's- I am part of this character.
I am a piece of the whole.
Definitely need to get a tight one of that one.
It's one of my new favorite photos of me and my mum.
(laughing) I just love this face.
Just in awe.
I was born in New Zealand on a little island called Waiheke
which is just off the coast of Auckland.
I've always enjoyed the sensations of being up high
of going fast.
I was a massive tree climber.
The higher I could get up, the kind of more exciting
and fun it was. If I could get to the top
and have a view from the top of the tree, I was like-
that went down in my favorites as 'favorite tree.'
I would just disappear into the forest
and catch tadpoles or make forts in the forest.
And then when it started getting dark, I would come home.
It's sort of when I think back at it now,
it's dreamy, really, the sort of childhood that I had.
And the weird thing about life is that
because it was so normal and I had no other comparison
it was just, that was the norm.
Maybe I was different and just different enough
that I just didn't notice.
(laughing)
That's about as girly as I got at that age.
That's the feminine Zoe.
This is me most Friday nights.
It happens.
It sounds obvious, but my strengths have always been
the things that I'm most passionate about.
So English, I always did really well in English.
PE. Physical Education, obviously.
Photography. And it was sort of concerning to me,
at some point, when I realized I should be considering,
a career of something at some point.
I was like, "Where in the world do those three things
"apex in something that I could monetize?"
When you're selling a hit, it's all about, for me,
if I'm gonna hit you, bonk, straight in the face.
If you imagine that whatever this is
travels out the other end,
so if I'm hitting you in the nose
it's like something's pulling you on the back of the head.
- [Interviewer] So after high school,
did you go to university?
- No, I took a year off after high school
because I didn't know what I wanted to be.
My Dad would have been a doctor, my mom had been a nurse
and a real estate agent.
I was toying with the idea of going to med school,
but I didn't have a passion for it,
so the plan was to take a year off,
see what was going on in my life and my world
before I'd committed to going to university,
and in that year, basically I'd finished doing gymnastics
when I was 15, 16, but I'd stayed training
because I just sort of loved it,
and I had met a man by the name of Peter Bell, no relation,
who turns out was like a stunt man in New Zealand.
It just popped up in a bunch of different places in my life,
including my dad was working at an ER
and he had had a stuntman come in
that had a concussion and a bump on the head,
and I had been banging on about it at home
because I'd seen an interview with a stuntman on tv
and I was like, "I'm sorry, people get paid to do what?"
And Dad then came home with the phone number of
this Pete Bell guy that I had been training with.
And it's funny 'cause suddenly now I had direct access to it
and then I was terrified. I was like "Hell no
"I'm not calling that guy, like what am I gonna say?
"What am I gonna tell him, I think I'd be good at it?"
Dad was like, "Yeah."
I was like, "Ugh! That goes against every grain
"in my body!" And he basically locked me outside
with the phone and was like-
and he wasn't trying to be profound,
he was just speaking sense.
But he said, "Here's the thing.
"You could not make the phone call today,
"and you'd wake up tomorrow
"in exactly the same place you are
"which is great, you've got a good life,
"you're healthy, you're happy, no big deal.
"You could make the phone call and wake up tomorrow
"and nothing's changed. Or you could-"
(laughs) This is gonna make me cry.
"Or you could make the phone call,
"and you could- (laughs)
"wake up tomorrow a stunt woman.
"But if you don't make the call,
"you definitely won't wake up a stunt woman."
(laughing)
Thanks Dad!
(sniffling)
That is so weird, I don't think I've ever cried
telling that story.
That's "Amazon High", the first job I ever did.
I wish I could zoom in like new-school technology,
so you could look at just how full,
'whatever' tom-boy face I had.
My first job was down there for three weeks.
I met this group of stunt people and it was like,
I had found family instantly.
And we're all a variety of different personalities,
but whatever that mutual joy or appreciation of the work is,
I had not felt it like that before,
it was...dunno, I was just like,
"I'd like to do this forever."
(Laughing)
These are quite classic. "Xena" days-
this was obviously the same episode,
but it was often me and a bunch of stunt guys,
a number of whom are now my forever brothers.
Lucy, without a doubt, has been
such an informative role model, really.
I knew when I watched her, that's the kind of person
I wanted to be on set.
She was the lead, she took her work seriously,
but she always set this sort of tone that was
light-hearted, she was super-accessible,
was really impressed by how she conducted herself.
Lucy had said, you know, you and I are often the nucleus
of the mood on-set, and it's important that you
accept and respect that responsibility.
And I remember being like,
"That is one of those I should write it down lessons."
And it turns out I didn't need to write it down
'cause I'll never forget it.
The first real injury I had was on "Xena".
We were doing a gag where Xena's-
she flips off the platform
and lands in the town square, she's two stories up,
and Pete Bell, who was my coordinator at the time, was like,
"I don't think physically possible to get you to clear
this platform before you flip."
And I was 19 at the time, and I was like,
"I can make it work."
But so I under rotated and I
hit the end of my wires, flat with my back
towards the ground, so my hips stopped
and everything else didn't.
First thought was, "Oh my god,
what if I can never work again?"
And then I had a moment where I was like,
"What if I can never walk again?"
But you know what? The funny thing is
that wasn't when I learnt the lesson.
I then went to hospital, I had fractured
one of the little nubby bits in my vertebrae,
I had to rest or whatever.
But I went back to work a couple of weeks later,
and I walked onto set that day and pulled the director,
the second the director looked at me, he was like,
"Why are you here?" And I was like,
"I'm fine! Look! I can do things that, you know,
"fine!" And he was like, "Okay, well,
we're breaking a chair over your back."
I was like, "Oh no, I've got two back pads on,
it'll be fine." And we rolled cameras
and they broke this chair over my back,
and it (gasp) just dropped me.
I was crying involuntarily,
it wasn't- (gasping)
but tears were rolling, I couldn't breathe.
I was in the most severe pain ever,
and Paul looked at me and he was like,
"Go home. Don't come back until you're better,
"because we need you, but you're no good to us broken."
That was the lesson.
It's not about being strong,
it's about being competent.
I was working on "Xena" and one of the ADs came to set
and was like, "Zoe!
"There's a call for you on the set phone!"
Her name is Amanda McAuley
and she was the director of Double Dare.
And I guess her story is,
she'd been wanting to do this documentary
on Hollywood stuntwomen, and I was like,
"Shit, no, I don't wanna do that."
And she was like, "Wh-what do you mean?"
I was like, "No, because you're gonna expect me to be
"fit and healthy and working out all the time.
"I eat McDonald's, I drink all the time,
"I smoke like a pack of cigarettes a day,
"I am not the person you want.
"Like if you're gonna splice that,
"I'm gonna have to fake it and I'm not doing that."
And so she rang back and was like,
"I don't know how else to say this,
"but I like that you swear
"and I'm down with the fact that you smoke cigarettes
"and I don't care that you don't work out."
At that point, I went, "Sure."
And through that, in a random sort of way,
I ended up at the auditions for "Kill Bill".
I'm gonna double Uma Thurman!
That's me and Uma. In China.
Cute, that one. I don't have very many with her,
so that's rad. This is me in the crazy 88,
and Quentin, squished in the middle, there.
Killed all of them. (laughing)
We drive into the Beijing film studios,
and my memory is such that I walk in
and I'm in the studio was-
the 20 Chinese fight team members,
and that's kind of it. I'm just there.
There was a woman, Satiya, who was there
to do all the Wushu sword stuff for Uma.
I remember at one point watching Satiya
be taught some of the fight beats,
and then they walked away and left her to it,
and she got about sort of 4 or 5 beats in
and I could see her sort of not know what the next-
she couldn't remember what the next move was.
And I remembered what the next move was,
I just didn't know how to do it.
And I'd say to her, I was like,
"I think it's that thing where you, you know,
"go over your head." And she was like,
"Oh, you mean this!" (Whoosh) And I was like,
"Yeah that, whatev- yeah that thing." You know.
And there came, uh, the agreement basically,
that she would, they would teach her the fight,
I would watch, remember the choreography,
because it's what I'd been doing for four years on "Xena",
and then I would teach her the choreography
and she would teach me how to do the moves.
And then the first day we were on set to shoot the fight,
I was sitting there in the costume,
when all I could rememeber was them going like,
"We're gonna go through this part of the fight."
And tiger-walk through it. And they were like,
"Ah, ah, sorry." And I was like,
"I'm sorry, what?" And they were like,
"We're gonna do this part of the fight."
And I was like, "Okay! Cool, Uh."
And I got up and I did it and afterwards,
I walked up to Deedee and I was like,
"You never taught me that fight!" And he was like,
"Yeah, but we've been watching."
And that was it, that was...
Then I became a bit of everything-double.
Check this out!
One of the things that I loved about "Death Proof"
and when Quentin was sitting in my house
telling me about it for the first time, like,
"You know that character that's called Zoe,
"that's called Zoe because it's you.
"And you're gonna play that role."
Him talking about the importance of that
stunt community and the way that we think
and the way that we communicate
and having two of the lead roles being stunt people...
I was so honored on behalf of the stunt community
and on behalf of the behind the scenes,
it was so important to him that the movie wasn't
an expose of what's behind the curtains,
but a kudos to the hidden heroes that that's-
and that's how he really felt about them.
"Hateful Eight" with Quentin, his words to me on that,
my memory is him basically being like,
"Look, your job in this movie is to be as cute as possible,
"and then die good." And I was like,
"Cute. Can-do.
"Die good? Definitely."
(laughing)
One of the first times you really see me,
I pop up into the carriage?
And it was the second time we went to do it,
and Tim Roth was in there, and I popped up and I was like,
"Blablablablablah!" And I looked at Tim
and he was just looking at me like,
not in-character at all, but completely just like,
"Look at her!" (laughing)
And I finished it and we're like,
"Cut, blahblahblah." And Tim came up to me afterwards,
and he was like, "You're so adorable,
you're doing such an amazing job." And I was just like,
"Tim Roth is telling me I'm doing good acting!
That's amazing!"
Being a stunt coordinator, it was like
a perspective shift. And it was an interesting
thing for Quentin and I, too,
because our relationship had always been, he was like,
"I want this!" And I was like,
"Let's do it!" And on this one, I was like,
"Ooh." I can't put someone else in that position
until I've done all the checks.
And I had to figure out a way to do that with him.
It was like being an adult stunt person,
it was eye-opening in the best possible way.
I think my magic hour is right after the sun comes up.
There's something peaceful about that time in the morning
because this isn't happening yet,
everyone's not awake and it's not all abuzz,
and the sun's not 100% up. I wake up very easily,
so I'm alert, and it's really nice to be alert
when the world is sleepy.
I have a little-
this is my mum in my pocket.
- [Interviewer] Aww! - (laughing)
You know, last year was, it was amazing stuff
and there was horrible stuff, but it was like
everything was big. All the way through all of it,
there's been these moments of beauty
that have been undeniable.
Mum and Dad both when I would come home
and tend to be a bit, like,
"I could have done this differently,
"and I wish I'd've done that differently,
"and blablablablah," and,
they were both really vocal
in being like, "You're where you are for a reason."
And that was always Mum's sort of thing
was not even a matter of having earned it,
but just, "You've made the decisions you've made along
"the way and you've put in the work where you've put it,
"that you have led yourself here
"in some way, shape or form."
- [Interviewer] What would the little girl
running around in New Zealand...
What would she be thinking about Zoe today?
- I imagine little Zoe would probably be quite enamored
and excited that that's what she had to look forward to
and I think that'd probably be also
if she was emotionally congnizant enough at the time
to probably try and remind me of that freedom
that comes from the fearlessness
and how to reengage with that,
that sometimes putting meaning on stuff
just makes it harder.
I do this career because I love the work.
I've learned how to play that game
with my own set of rules,
I'm starting to figure that out.
(gently drifting piano)