Cory DeMeyers is an Emmy-nominated Stunt Coordinator, with more than 13 years of industry experience. His passion for storytelling and attention to detail makes him an asset to every production he is a part of. Most recently, Cory served as the Supervising Stunt Coordinator for Seasons 3-4 of HBO’s hit show, The Righteous Gemstones, starring John Goodman and Danny McBride, for which he received his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Stunt Coordination. He also Stunt Coordinated Netflix’s Rebel Ridge for which he won the Vulture Stunt Award for Best Shootout and the 2025 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Stunt Ensemble.
In addition to being a Stunt Coordinator, Cory has served as a Stunt Performer on many well-known Hollywood productions including James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water; Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu’s The Revenant; and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, for which he won a Taurus World Stunt Award for Best High Work.
As the final season of The Righteous Gemstones hits our screens, debuting with a brilliant episode set during the American Civil War, providing backstory for the foundation of the Gemstone’s faith and featuring some insane battle scenes, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Cory about the relationship between comedy and stunts, and the process of bringing to life a one-shot battle scene for the show!
Nick: Cory, it’s such a pleasure to meet you, man!
Cory DeMeyers: Yeah, you as well, brother!
Nick: I’m very keen to chat with you as I don’t often get the chance to chat with stunt performers and co-ordinators, like yourself, about the craft of stunt work. And obviously, your most recent work on The Righteous Gemstones is this incredible mix of comedy and stunts, of which there’s been such an interesting relationship between those two things since the dawn of cinema, right? Performers like Charlie Chaplin were combining comedy and stunts hundreds of years ago! How do you see the relationship between those two elements?
Cory DeMeyers: Oh, man! That’s such a good question. You’re right – Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton – those were the integration of physical comedy into film and television. I think the thing with stunts and comedy is that you don’t need dialogue to do a comedic stunt. You obviously can have clever comedy and dialogue, but there is something so inherently funny in movement, when it’s used properly.
So, I think that’s, you know, kind of how it all started. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were bringing stunts into the world of comedy. They were the forefathers of physical comedy, you know?
Nick: Was there a movie or TV show that first really highlighted how stunts can elevate a story or premise?
Cory DeMeyers: It’s funny, I grew up as a martial artist and a professional parkour and free running athlete, right? So, I was always into action movies as a kid. Then as an adult, I got into parkour, and that’s what got me into the movie business, believe it or not. So, I was always just pumped up after watching action films, and leaving the cinemas wanting to climb walls and jump off stuff, and do fake fights with my karate friends [laughs].
But there’s not really one thing in particular that inspired me to go down this path, per se. It was just a love of film, and a love of action. And I was always a really jumpy, bouncy kid!
Nick: Let’s chat about this Civil War episode that opened season four of The Righteous Gemstones. I’m a fan of the show, and this was a surprising, but really entertaining bit of backstory about this family. And there is an incredible Civil War action scene in this episode. I’m curious to know what the process was from reading that in the script, to the collaborations you needed to pull of this scene?
Cory DeMeyers: Bro, I was also just as excited you are now when I read it, honestly. When I was reading the script, I thought it was completely insane and I was stoked to have the opportunity to help bring it to life.
So, for that first actual “war” scene, it read just as a battle scene, and so I spoke with Danny [McBride] and tried to find out what the real vision was for this. The action wasn’t really described in detail. It wasn’t shot details; it was a script. But it did end with one of the characters getting blown up by a cannonball and landing in camera with his leg blown off.
And so, I was asking Danny what he wanted, because depending on how many things he wanted to highlight, we might need stunts guys on each side, a bunch of background actors. And he said that he wanted it to feel like we were really there, and he wanted it to be a “oner”, and he only wanted it to be look at the Confederate soldiers.
I went and bought a bunch of the little toy green Civil War soldiers, and I set up what the sequence would look like on my kitchen island. I set up the entire battlefield with horses, and carriages, and cannons, and trees and fences from our art department. I took photos of all of this, and then I sketched on the photos were things like saddle falls would happen and where guys should die, and I presented all of this to Danny and he thought it was incredible!
Nick: It’s so interesting that the scene is only showing the Confederate side, but there’s still so many moving parts happening even though it’s literally one side of the battle. How many performers are in that shot?
Cory DeMeyers: Oh, it was a huge scene! We ended up having 100 background actors, 20 reenactors as speciality performers who were allowed to fire black powder muskets, 13 stunt performers, and 12 wranglers for the horses. Plus, we also had a team who were operating the cannons, and that was led by a guy named Cannon Bob who’s licensed to operate black powder cannons!
Nick: [laughs] You can’t get a name any more appropriate for that than Cannon Bob!
Cory DeMeyers: Oh dude, he’s the best! Actually, in the corner of my screen, he made these scale replicas of the cannons, and we were gifted them with these Righteous Gemstones stamps on them. But we dressed up Cannon Bob’s team as Confederate soldiers so they could operate the cannons. Then we also had our VFX team bury mortars in the ground, and I had to work closely with them to make that not only our performers were safe, but that it was far enough away to not spook the horses!
Nick: And then in the second episode, what I think might be one of the funniest moments in the show so far, is the Gemstones in the jetpacks during their giving service, which is also a big stunt! But I’d love to know, do you get a chance to enjoy the comedy of something that ludicrous in the script before you go, “Okay, how the hell am I going to pull this off?”
Cory DeMeyers: Man, I laugh every time I read stuff like that. I am the dictionary explanation of ‘LOL’. I’m laughing non-stop reading these scripts! It’s one of my favourite things to do. And I’ve had the opportunity to perform in a few comedies, but having the opportunity to co-ordinate this show brings me so much joy and laughter, and pleasure and happiness, and every other synonym you can think of.
I remember telling my fiancé how hilarious these scripts are, and I would just break down laughing in the kitchen when I would read them to her. I’m a fan, man. And I was a big fan of Danny [McBride] before this. He was one of my favourite comedic actors. I grew up watching his stuff as a teenager and then getting into this business and randomly getting the opportunity to now work with him and the rest of the crew is really a dream come true.
Nick: How was it working with him on that insane jet-pack stunt?
Cory DeMeyers: Danny did great! He’s always down to do the physical stuff, and he was down from day one to do the jet-pack stunt. He said in an interview, and he’s 100% right, those harnesses are not comfortable. You’re wearing this fake jet-pack, but it still weights maybe 30 pounds, which makes it so uncomfortable to fly around in that harness. And after four days of doing it, it can get a little old! But he was a trooper.
We got him on the spinning rig on a floor that special effects built and did some mid-speed turns. Then for the wide shots, we put his stunt double, Mike, in there and cranked it up to 10 for as long as he could stand. But all the cast, Danny, Edi [Patterson], and Adam [DeVine] were all champs with that stunt.
Thank you so much to Cory for his time, and to Lumos PR for organising the chat. You can see more of our interview with Cory in an uncut and extended interview on YouTube, where Cory chats about the gnarliest stunt he’s ever performed, recognising stunts at awards ceremonies, and the time he got a round of applause from Quentin Tarantino and Leonardo Di Caprio for a stunt he performed on Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
