Before becoming a world-famous stunt performer and stunt coordinator, Zoë Bell kickstarted her career in Xena: Warrior Princess. For three seasons, Bell served as body double for none other than Lucy Lawless (Spartacus: House of Ashur) herself, meaning that a lot of us had contact with her early work without even realizing it. During an interview with Collider, Bell talked about her experience on set and revealed the moment in the series in which she felt her life was changed.
At Fantastic Fest where she was celebrating the 10th anniversary of Raze, Bell talked to Collider’s Perri Nemiroff about her evolution in the stunt department and how she learned to navigate through Hollywood projects with both exorbitant and tiny budgets — as well as how this impacts the stunts in a movie. But all of that experience was only possible after she saw herself onscreen in Xena: Warrior Princess and realized something important:
“[T]he first time I saw an episode, which was probably a year after I’d been doubling her [Lucy Lawless] because we were a year behind. So I was watching some of it, and I remember being like [gasps]. And it wasn’t just about me. I was like, ‘Look at that cool shit I’m doing and look at what everyone else is doing so that now I’m Xena. It’s not Zoë in the Xena outfit. We are doing this thing together!’ I understood what I was offering as a team member and I really appreciated it.”
Bell’s Action Packed Career
After Xena, Bell went on to participate on some huge projects, most notably Quentin Tarantino projects. She was the stunt double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and then had her breakout acting role in Death Proof. Over the last couple of decades, Bell has starred and worked in the stunts of several projects, including Malignant, Lost, and Thor: Ragnarok.
In 2013, Bell added the producer hat to her roster with Raze. Also during the interview, she revealed that the movie was a game-changer in terms of how she approached a story and started to factor in elements she never really considered before. She stated “Raze for me was like, ‘I’m telling stories. It’s important to me how this is perceived. Not because I want people to think it’s good or bad, but I want people to feel stuff, and I have an opinion, and I now have a voice for the first time,’ and I loved it.”
You can stream Xena: Warrior Princess on Prime Video. Stay tuned at Collider for the rest of Nemiroff’s conversation with Bell.
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