Combining over 3 decades of experience to bring to life some of the most jaw dropping stunts within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jason Bourne franchise, and most recently, Prime Video’s The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, Thom Khoury Williams and Chris Romrell, know what it takes to explosively captivate an audience while also focusing on the drama that drives the tension.
After hundreds of credits, and many years of ground pounding and pain, Thom Koury Williams has now made his way into the even more competitive field of stunt coordinating and 2nd unit directing. Being behind the camera has been a lifelong dream for Thom, as it lets him be a part of the creative process from day one as he makes his way towards his goal of being a Hollywood director.
Christopher Romrell is a Screen Actors Guild Award-Winning Stunt Coordinator and Stunt Double known for his fusion of character-led fight choreography, logistical precision, and commanding on-screen presence. Chris won the SAG Award for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture for his work as the stunt double for both Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt in Avengers: Endgame.
As The Terminal List: Dark Wolf takes us back in the military centric world created by Jack Carr, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Thom and Chris about how veterans help inform their work on the show, and how their collaborative efforts brought to life an exhilarating, one-shot tunnel extraction in episode four.
Nick: When I think about how action and stunt work has evolved in film and television over the years, and especially with it comes to military focused action in something like The Terminal List, is this focus on realistic portrayals. I’m curious to know how you’ve both seen this element evolve over time?
Thom Khoury Williams: You know, when I first came into the business, Hong Kong style was really popular. That was actually the first thing I trained in. I fought Hong Kong style. I even fought Jackie Chan a couple of times. It was all this fantastical, crazy stuff.
And as a coordinator, I love this style so much. I think everything – the superhero stuff, the fantastical wire fighting – I just love it. But, the thing I really enjoy most as a both a coordinator and a performer is making everything realistic and gritty and nasty. I love that’s come back with these military dramas and thrillers.
Chris Romrell: Yeah, I love all styles of action. I think that Hong Kong style, the John Wick, Marvel style, and all of these particular flavours work for their particular stories and shows. And that’s what I’m most interested in with Dark Wolf, creating action that fits the stories and characters. So, it really just depends on what fits the world that is being built.
Nick: Something that I definitely noticed watching Dark Wolf and The Terminal List is that the drama between the characters and situations fuels the tension and action. What does the collaboration with performers, actors, even writers look like as you are all trying to find the drama within the action?
Chris Romrell: Yeah, that’s a really great question. It starts in the writers room. We have 25 veterans that work on the show, both in front of and behind the camera. And we’re really trying to focus on making this show for a specific audience – veterans. We want to make sure everything passes the sniff test for them.
As we build out these action sequences, we are very much collaborating with our veterans, and asking how it feels for them, or if it seems realistic and true to form. Is that what they experienced? Then all of the actors, like Taylor Kitsch, are brought into it, and they have so many questions. They bring their characters and influence into it, and we fold all of that into the mix.
Thom Khoury Williams: We do a lot of pre-vis, which is a huge part of the process. We would talk to the writers, go off and prepare something in pre-vis, then go back to the writers and the directors to get more input. It’s an extremely collaborative process. Chris and I would often sit in video village with the writers, directors, actors, always talking about and planning things. Really going into deep dives on what they would be looking for.
I remember sitting with Max Adams, one of our writers. God, Chris and I must’ve sat with him for about two hours, helping him write a scene from a military aspect point of view. It’s just an amazing back and forth between people.
Chris Romrell: And that’s not too common on a lot of shows. The script is Bible usually. Whereas our scripts were a living thing. We’d get to a location and think something wasn’t going to work, or this bit won’t work with what we’ve already built, and we would be able to adapt with these guys to build them out properly.
Nick: How much does that collaboration, more specifically with the actors who are already bringing their ideas of the character to everything, then inform what they’re going to physically do in the show?
Thom Khoury Williams: It’s the same thing as with the writers. We want to involve them, because they are the character. And they’re also very involved with their stunt doubles. They talk about everything with them.
Chris and I worked on one scene with Taylor in particular – the train sequence where he goes after the lone wolf. Originally, there was supposed to be a big fight on the train. And Chris and I were racking our brains because it just wasn’t making sense. All the choreo we tried looked really cool, but it just didn’t feel right. And we were sitting there having a conversation with Taylor Kitsch, the showrunner, the writers, and we all just kind of looked at each other and said, “Do we just Indiana Jones this dude?” And it turned out great!
Nick: One more collaboration I want to ask about is with cinematographers. The tunnel extraction scene in episode four is unreal, and if I’m not mistaken, it was all done in one shot. What was the process in bringing that to life in such a visceral and exciting way?
Chris Romrell: We started as early as possible planning that scene because we needed to include every department! We needed picture cars, locations, riders, Kenny who is our first unit camera guy. We tried to have as many conversations as early as possible so that by the time we got to building it out, all of the kinks had been worked out, and we then had buy-in from every other department. We had all of their support.
Thom Khoury Williams: They also did something here that never really happens on TV, but they brought everyone out to the rehearsal. All of the writers, cameramen, and showrunners came out and rehearsed the sequence with us. Normally we would just run a rehearsal with our own camera guy, but because this was such an intricate oner, we needed the actual guy out there with us.
They rearranged the whole shooting schedule for this, and we went down for half a day with everyone involved to rehearse the actual sequence with our director, Liz Friedlander, having eyes on the whole thing.
Nick: Would you both say that sequence was up there in terms of logistical planning and execution?
Thom Khoury Williams: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a highlight, for sure. Even just the location in Hungary was honestly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s this gorgeous church up on a mountain, and then this tunnel with so much history in it.
Nick: My favourite thing to ask stunt performers and coordinators is what is the gnarliest stunt you’ve performed? And what is the one you’re most proud of?
Thom Khoury Williams: God, performing wise… In The Book of Eli, I played the character who had the chainsaw fight with Denzel Washington under the bridge. That was a lot of fun.
But, I do think the most fun I had performing was on the last Bourne movie, and the Las Vegas strip chase. I was one of the main drivers, and we had the Las Vegas strip for about a month, doing like 100 miles an hour with 100 other stunt cars, weaving through and destroying cars and the strip. It’s honestly one of my favourite moments performing.
Chris Romrell: You know, we’re doing The Terminal List season two, and I’m doubling Chris Pratt right now. And we’re doing some gnarly stuff that I can’t talk about just yet.
One of my favourite classic stunts was diving away from a giant explosion. And I got to do that on an ice glacier in Iceland for The Tomorrow War. Just the way they shot it was the pinnacle of being a stunt man, just diving away from an explosion. It was great.
Thank you so much to Thom and Chris for their time, and to Lumos PR for organising the interview. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf is currently streaming on Prime Video.
