#debbie evans

The Moon Over The Alley | Joseph Despins | 1976

Meet Debbie Evans, the world’s greatest stuntwoman who has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows over the last 40 years and, at 59, has no plans of slowing down any time soon. Empire caught up with Debbie to talk about her work in The Fate Of The Furious (she’s worked on 6 of the 8 Fast films), the time she almost came a cropper on Matrix: Reloaded and her work stunt doubling in Terminator 2 and the original Wonder Woman TV series...

EMPIRE: You started riding motorbikes when you were six – how did you even find motorbike the right size for you?!

They didn’t have them back then! I had a mini-bike with a Yamaha 80 engine in it, which was really powerful that my dad had. Then I got a Honda 55 step-through – my dad gave me a shift lever in a box for Christmas. We went out to the garage and he had bought this motorcycle and a pile of parts so we worked on it and put it together, and I was nine-years-old when it was done. It was right before all the cool little motorcycles came out.

EMPIRE: How did you get your start in the stunt game?

I was going to junior college after high school and I saw a TV show where it was supposed to be a girl on a motorcycle, but it was clearly a guy with wide shoulders and a wide neck! I went, “I could do that!”, because I was riding for Yamaha at the time, riding against guys in national competitions. One day I got a call saying, “Do you want to be in a movie?”, and it was for a Roger Corman B-movie called Death Sport. I wound up working on that and realised it was what I really wanted to do, and I pursued it. I used to do all the physical stunts too, not just the vehicle stunts.

EMPIRE: Didn’t you do a big ravine jump in Death Sport? Yes – it was 30 feet, which was big back then, especially if riding an old heavy bike. I didn’t have a speedometer, so we set up a ramp on the road and measured the distance, and we just kept doing the jump until we got it right every time. I knew what gear and what RPM sound the engine was making when I made the jump, and it went great.

EMPIRE: As for the Fast & The Furious franchise, have you done stunts in every one of the films?

I did 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8. And hopefully I’ll do 9 and 10! I was hurt when 4 came out, and I was on another job when 5 was being made.

EMPIRE: Do you ever think any of the stunts sound too insane to pull off?

Well, we always find a way to do it. The stunt co-coordinator and the second unit director get presented with an idea, and then we’ll have a meeting and brainstorm how we’ll get it done, which is a lot of fun.

EMPIRE: You use little toy cars to plan stunts, right?

Yes, uh-huh. It works really well because a lot of us are very visual learners. We draw out the lanes and figure out what each of us is gonna do. Then we do a half-speed rehearsal, and then when we’re all happy, we do it.

EMPIRE: What are some of the stunts you performed in The Fate Of The Furious?

I did quite a few! I drove on the ice in Iceland in the Rally Fighter with studded tyres on the ice – that was really cool! That car had a lot of power but no emergency brakes, like rear brakes, so I would just pitch it sideways with the power. Then we went to Cleveland and I drove the red Corvette – that sounded amazing and to drive something that classic and cool was really nice. We also filmed the police car motorcade there, so I was in a police car a whole bunch and took the back end of a taxi cab off with a camera on my car, and that looked really cool. Then they had the cars coming out of the parking structure – that was all real. Nobody was in the cars, of course, but they did it all with practical effects. I was in one of the ‘zombie cars’ when they hack all the computers and control the cars. There was a bunch. I can’t wait to see what they have for us next time!

EMPIRE: You were Michelle Rodriguez’ stunt double too, right?

Yes, I’ve doubled Michelle for a lot of years. In Part 6 there was bunch of times I was chasing myself, because I’d be doubling for Michelle but also driving the car chasing her!

EMPIRE: You’ve been in a ton of iconic films, like Terminator 2: Judgement Day. What did you do in that?

I was the stunt double for Linda Hamilton. That was all physical stunts in that one. I’d test out stunts for Linda then teach her what to do when it was possible for her to do something. You know the scene where she’s doing all the pull-ups? What you don’t see is me out of frame holding her up by the legs! She was really strong and really buff, but there’s no way you can do take after take of that.

EMPIRE: Any times a stunt looked like it was going to go horribly wrong?

On Matrix: Reloaded when the agent morphs into the truck driver and takes over the truck and it tries to come over and smash the motorcycle and that almost went wrong. In rehearsals I told the truck driver to do what he was gonna do on the day, so I knew how much time I had to do everything. When we went to do it I suddenly heard the trailer brakes come on and he swerves in, so I put on the brakes as hard as I could and the back end of the trailer went right over my front wheel and smacked the wall. It was inches from my face. That day almost ended the whole thing. When I got off the motorcycle I felt physically ill because it came that close. There was also a TV ad that was re-enacting the Thelma & Louise sequence where they drive off the cliff. I was facing the cliff with my foot on the brake and they asked me to move forward a little bit. I did, and then the throttle got stuck. I just reached down and shut the car off in a flash. The girl sitting next to me said “I’m so grateful it was you because if it was anybody else I would’ve died!!!”

EMPIRE: Wonder Woman is back in a big way, and you did stunts on the original Wonder Woman TV series, right?

Yes, I did her motorcycle stunts! I was always jumping the motorcycle, doing wheelies. It was fun!

EMPIRE: You’ve been doing this for a long time now. Any plans to retire?

I still love it. I’ve tried to quit a couple of times, and I’m not as happy of a person because I’m not doing what I’m meant to do.