Who walks for the Daywalker? Wesley Snipes's stunt double in "Deadpool & Wolverine" has been in just about every big blockbuster of the last few years.
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00:00Who walks for the Daywalker?
00:02Wesley Snipes' stunt double in Deadpool and Wolverine has been in just about every big
00:06blockbuster of the last few years.
00:09Among the many superhero cameos featured in Deadpool and Wolverine, the appearance of
00:13Blade, played once again by Wesley Snipes, is maybe one of the most surprising.
00:18Although the Blade films were cult classics back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Snipes
00:24hasn't acted in the role since 2004.
00:27And from the way Snipes tells it, no one was more surprised than him to be coming back.
00:32He told Entertainment Weekly,
00:33"...I didn't think we would be able to pull it off.
00:36I didn't think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it.
00:39I thought it didn't make sense to me, but when you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out
00:43of the blue after 20 years, you go, okay, I gotta take this call."
00:48But although Snipes was reportedly eager to team up with Reynolds, his former Blade Trinity
00:52co-star, he didn't bring back the same stunt double he'd used in the Blade trilogy.
00:57Instead, prolific stunt performer Kali Nell stood in during some parts of his brief but
01:02intense action scene.
01:03Nell fit right into the production, which makes sense — Deadpool and Wolverine was
01:08far from his first Marvel rodeo.
01:10The French-born Kali Nell began training in martial arts as a teenager, specializing in
01:14taekwondo and later parkour and freerunning.
01:18He began working as a stunt performer when he was hired to work on Guardians of the Galaxy,
01:22beginning his long and fruitful relationship with Marvel.
01:26In the years since, he has doubled for some of the most prominent actors working in the
01:30industry today, including Samuel L. Jackson in The Hitman's Bodyguard, Jaimon Honsu in
01:35both King Arthur, Legend of the Sword, and The King's Man, Corey Hawkins in The Last
01:40Voyage of the Demeter, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The
01:46Matrix Resurrections.
01:48Aside from these doubling roles, he's been featured as a general stunt performer in a
01:52surprising number of high-profile productions over the past decade.
01:56He's dipped a toe in seemingly every franchise, appearing in Kingsman The Secret Service,
02:01Terminator Genisys, Transformers The Last Knight, Solo A Star Wars Story, Men in Black
02:07International, The Batman, and Fast X.
02:11He also has several actor credits to his name, although they're generally side characters
02:16who mainly exist specifically to be involved in stunts.
02:19In Kingsman The Secret Service, for example, he was part of the gang that gets beaten up
02:23by Colin Firth in the pub.
02:25-"Are we going to stand around here all day, or are we going to fight?"
02:29Although Nell has developed a reputation as an elite stunt performer over the years, even
02:34winning Best Fight at the Taurus World Stunt Awards for his work in The King's Man, that's
02:38not all he does on set.
02:40In recent years, Nell has split his time between traditional stunt doubling and dabbling in
02:44fight coordination, which is a far more intricate role.
02:48Essentially, a fight coordinator designs and oversees all fight sequences in a film or
02:53television series, sometimes working with a choreographer depending on the needs of
02:58the production.
02:59For example, if there's a particularly complicated style of martial arts required, they collaborate
03:04with the stunt coordinator who handles all the action sequences of the film.
03:08But they're in charge of using on-screen fights to execute the director's storytelling vision.
03:13In 2022, Nell served as a fight coordinator for the star's historical drama Becoming Elizabeth,
03:19and the following year he was brought on in the same role for both Ridley Scott's epic
03:23Napoleon and the second season of Marvel's Loki.
03:26While he's still working as a stunt performer, he also has more upcoming fight coordinator
03:30credits to his name, including the high-profile Gladiator 2, coming out in November 2024.