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Wild ride.
Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” features an epic scene where Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) shows up on a motorcycle to save his allies, including Yelena (Florence Pugh), from Valentina’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) agents.
Joe Dryden, the stunt performer and coordinator who rode the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 ST in place of Stan, 42, exclusively spoke to The Post about how the team pulled off the thrilling moment.
“The majority of my free ride work, we shot on a splinter unit,” Dryden said. “We were at the exact same location. They were just further down the road with [director] Jake [Schreier] and the cast were a little further away. And then we would meet up and shoot some stuff together, but then we’d kind of break off and do some stuff in a smaller unit.”
“And in that smaller unit was just a lot of people that have worked a lot together,” Dryden continued. “George Cottle, second unit director, who’s brilliant, he was around for it. [Stunt coordinator] Heidi [Moneymaker] was involved. And then our stunt drivers were around me. And even our camera vehicle operator and company owner is my best friend. So we’ve done so much together. That little unit works super well together. It’s calm, collected. Everybody knows what they’re doing.”
Dryden explained that they spent three weeks shooting Bucky’s motorcycle scene in Utah.
“I went to Georgia first in February [2024]. I also went to Utah to scout,” he recalled. “First to look at the road, which is something that I never get to do. And again, that’s a huge credit to Heidi to make sure that I was prepared for what we were doing is involving me in the scouts. And even Jake in the very beginning was so cool about just saying, ‘Hey, look, if the boards aren’t gonna work or we think there’s a better way to do this or there’s something cooler, let me know what it is.'”
“And we did collaboratively as a team come up with something a little different than the original concept,” Dryden added. “I think it works well. The nose wheelie wasn’t in the original boards.”
Despite working on other Marvel movies before, “Thunderbolts*” marked his first collaboration with Stan.
“Motorcycles for me are my specialty and it has carved me out quite the niche in this business. I’ve doubled Tom Hardy in ‘Venom.’ Keanu [Reeves] in the ‘John Wick’ series,” he shared. “So I’ve been able to kind of really carve out a good name for myself and a good reputation. And I’ve doubled some pretty unique characters.”
Working on “John Wick” is the reason he landed a job on “Thunderbolts*.”
“Heidi Moneymaker is close with Chad Stahelski. And when she got this and she read this sequence, she was asking Chad for a little bit of advice. And he just recommended that she give me a call and work me into the fold a little,” he explained to The Post. “So, roundabout way was my work on ‘John Wick’ kind of got me into the ‘Thunderbolts*’ spot.”
Dryden “was moved” watching the superhero flick for the first time.
“It’s an incredible film and it for sure touched me,” he said. “Just the performances were amazing and the way Jake helped craft this story and the parallels with mental health and how they address it. I was completely blown away. It was not what I expected at all.“
“Thunderbolts*” is in theaters now.
English (US)