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30th Nov 2022

David Harbour reveals the one stunt that went hilariously wrong in Violent Night

Rory Cashin

David Harbour plays a kick-ass Santa in the new action-comedy-thriller.

If you hear that 87North Productions are involved in a movie, then you automatically know that the action scenes in that movie are going to be awesome.

They originated from the stunt team that helped put together the action sequences for John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw, and have since become producers in their own right, being behind recent action hits like Nobody and Bullet Train.

Their new movie is Violent Night, which sees Stranger Things star David Harbour as Santa Claus, who happens to be trapped in a house on Christmas Eve when a group of mercenaries take over a countryside mansion.

The movie stars John Leguizamo (Moulin Rogue, Encanto) as the leader of the bad guys, and is directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters).

In the run-up to the movie’s release, we chatted to David Harbour himself about the new movie, and you can check out that interview in full right here:

Alongside revealing his favourite Christmas movie of all time, Harbour also talks about the one stunt that went hilariously slightly awry during production.

Harbour told us the following:

“I’ll tell you what the funniest thing was, and this was so dumb. You think [the problems] will be with one of those big sequences, where the stunts are so complicated. Those were smooth as silk.

“But there was one dumb sequence, where I was running off with a little sledge. I’m running off with this sledge to go chase the bad guys down the hill. So I was running through this flat part, and I was supposed to run through two-and-a-half or three feet of snow. Where you’re down in the snow and you’re just running.

“And the minute you get into three feet of snow… this is the reason why people have snow shoes, so you can run on top of snow. I didn’t realise, the minute you get into three feet of snow, you cannot move. It’s like quicksand.

“So there is a dumb take. It was such a bad night. It was three in the morning, 20 below, I was so tired and so angry. And they were like ‘Just run into that field!’, so I ran into the field, and I just got stuck. I couldn’t move, I was like ‘AAAHHHH!’

“It was dumb things like that on this movie. Just running was the problem, but the big stunt sequences went flawlessly. […] God, I hope they don’t put that on the blooper reel, but they probably will.”

Violent Night arrives in Irish cinemas on Friday, 2 December.

 

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