Nash Edgerton is a jack of all trades and talks brotherly love

While his brother Joel is currently a starring role in Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby, we were fortunate enough to catch up with his older brother Nash Edgerton, to discuss life as a stuntman ahead of the DVD release of Zero Dark Thirty, of which he played an integral part.

As a writer, director, stuntman and actor, there seems to be very few things Nash doesn’t excel in, and we spoke to him about his various roles in cinema, to discover what life was like on the set of Kathryn Bigelow’s naturalistic thriller, while discovering his own personal ambitions in the industry.

In regards to Zero Dark Thirty, I was just wondering if you could tell us about how that experience was in comparison to other films you have made in the past?

I really enjoyed working on the film, going to a part of the world that I had never been to before and I got to work with a handful of people that I knew and was involved in a project that I found really interesting. It was hard work though. A solid couple months of night shoots in Jordan in the desert, wearing full military gear every night 6 nights a week and it was pretty intense, but it was a great challenge and on the days off we got I was able to go visit some very interesting places. Where we were it was so close to so many things in the Middle East and I’d never seen them before.

Is there one scene in particular the stands out as being really tough to shoot?

One of the sections was a landing in the helicopters. They had wind machines and dust and we got all the gear on because we were just entering the compound and you had the full night vision goggles and it was so hard to see anything. It was a little jumpy getting all the helicopters together and the night vision goggles there were these huge dust clouds and that was constantly challenging.

So did you speak to any real life navy seals to get advice about the small things like how to move, the right way of doing the things that most people wouldn’t notice?

Yeah we did, we had a few advisors there and before we started shooting we got to go to a military base and kind of go on a training camp with them and do exercises and practice raiding buildings and weapons training and the marching and kind of physical training.

So tell us about the fitness regime leading up to it…

It was tough. To get a sense of what those guys go through, even on a small scale and not being in any danger really was quite fascinating and as much as the shoot was tough and staying out all night in that gear, the idea of doing that for real with the potential for people to shoot at you would be pretty rough.

Do you think that by portraying somebody in the military you’ve almost discovered a new found appreciation for soldiers?

For sure, the navy seals in the cell were made up of actors, stunt performers and actual military personnel. Every now and then you’d get the chance in the downtime to talk to one of the guys and they wouldn’t give you much detail but they’d tell you about some of the stuff they’d done and that’s a whole other world to my life. Just appreciation for someone who puts themselves in risky situations, I’ve put myself in risky situations but you kind of control those situations. The idea of putting yourself in a situation where you don’t know what the other person is going to do or who’s there or what they have, is very different than me going and being set on fire or crashing a car or falling downstairs where everything is rehearsed and talked about before hand.

Have you ever had a life threatening situation on set? Has there ever been a stunt which has gone slightly wrong?

Yeah, I’ve had a few close calls but even afterwards you can say I know what went wrong there, I know what the mistake was or why that didn’t work out or I know why I got hurt and you can process that. The concept of not knowing where shit came from is a whole other world to me.

You double up for your brother Joel on several occasions, it must be great working so closely with him on set?

Yeah its awesome, we’re the best of friends and it’s kind of like an extension of our childhood, getting to dress up and play on films together, but it is slightly weird sometimes. I got hit by a car for him once on a TV show and he’s my little brother and it was freezing cold and I was under the roof of this car park and I’d been hit by the car once and the windscreen smashed and I got a shard of glass in my hand the nurse was pulling glass out of me and I was bleeding into a bucket, and then I looked over to my brother and he’s drinking a coffee, chatting to some make up artist and he looked comfortable [laughs]

Though it’s a job, being a stuntman is all about protecting the actor or performer you’re doubling. It must help that you’ve got that natural protective instinct in the fact that Joel is your younger brother?

Totally yeah, any time we’re filming and he has to do stuff, I feel like I’m always making sure it’s safe and looking after him.

You mentioned that the two of you would make movies at home when you were kids… If you could go back to your 10 year old self and say that one day you and Joel would be involved in huge Oscar winning movies would you have believed it?

No way, we didn’t even think it was possible to work on movies when we were growing up we would make stuff in the backyard but not with any inkling that it was at all possible.

It must be so exhilarating to be involved in some of the biggest productions ever made and to consider yourself to be a part of something so special?

It’s awesome, I’ve worked on films that I’d probably never tell anyone to watch and then I’ve worked on films that I’ve been so proud to be a part of them. And funnily doing this sometimes you can’t tell which way its going to go. Every time you work on something you want it to be the best it can and when it turns out as something that gets celebrated it is really special.

Are you able to ever go on to the set of a first day of the shoot and just think, this one is going to be quite special?

You can usually tell that there’s something about the elements of it that feels great. I worked on the first Matrix and I didn’t know anything about those directors at that time and obviously no one knew what that thing was going to be, but there was something about the way they were doing it that was really different. You know just the atmosphere on set was really wonderful I remember going to the screening of that in Sydney with everyone who had worked on it, and it being way beyond what we thought it would be. We thought it would be good but it was way beyond that. The feeling in the room with everyone who saw it was pretty amazing.

Was the movie industry something that you always wanted to get involved in? Was it always a dream of yours?

I think probably secretly it was, but it wasn’t until we left school when you have to decide what you want to do beyond school that we started actually looking into it, but we had no connection to the film industry. We had never met anyone in it, that had anything to do with it, so it was a total long shot at the start.

The expression ‘Jack of all trades’ gets used a lot, but you really are. You’re a director, an actor, a producer, a stuntman, you’ve done music videos… Was there one path you had most expected to go down, and had a passion for more than the others?

The first thing that I did at school when I actually had an idea that I wanted to work in films was to be a stuntman. I had this idea that if I made an action sequence and put it on my show reel that looked like it was from a movie, people would think that I done a movie and then I’d get a job. So I set out to make this sequence but I had no one really to help me. So me, my brother and a couple of friends got together to make this action sequence and it sort of became a short film. I just had to edit and we were shooting it ourselves and we were just involved in all the aspects of it and just enjoyed the making of it so much that beyond me trying to be a stuntman and Joel trying to be an actor, we wanted to be involved in making things and I found out that I had a natural flare for editing and I’ve kept practising those various skills. For me film making is such a collaborative thing and I like being able to do different aspects of it and work on other people’s films as well as my own. Working with other people is my film school, looking at other directors and how they work.

If you were offered your last ever job tomorrow, what would you hope it would be doing?

Probably directing, I find that the most challenging and I find that if you’re reckless and are asked to do a stunt you can just do one. Directing for me, I find the most challenging and rewarding, and as a director you get to collaborate with every department and be really involved. I just like story telling.

There are still quite a few films that you’ve worked on that haven’t come out yet, at least in Britain, such as Wish You Were Here, The Bling Ring, Wolverine etc. Are there any of those that you’re most excited about?

The only one of those that I have seen is Wish You Were Here because it’s come out in Australia already. The director is one of my dearest friends, and for that one in particular it was very special to me.

Does it ever get frustrating that when you’re watching a movie and you see yourself up on the big screen and you know that it’s you and yet few others do? Do you ever get the urge to stand up in the cinema and shout ‘that’s me!?’

(Laughs) The less that people recognise it’s you, the better job I’ve done. It’s weird, lately I’ve been doing a few acting things here and there and I realise that the first couple of days that I do it I’m trying to hide my face because that’s what you do as a stuntman. When you’re doubling someone you know all these different tricks of how to be close to camera and not be recognised and there are a handful of scenes that I’ve done as an actor that I’ve had to say ‘hey I’m the actor, it’s OK, I haven’t got to hide myself’.

You had great success with your short movies, Spider and Bear, do you plan on expanding on that one day and turn either into a feature film?

It’s interesting and I’d like to be able to, like you said, expand that character into a feature or make enough of them over time to full up a feature length. I keep rocking back and forth between which way I want to go with that character. But people seem to love watching him ruin his relationships.

Can we expect and second feature length film from you any time soon?

Hopefully yeah, me and my brother are writing one at the moment so it’s definitely the main focus I have at the moment.

Zero Dark Thirty Film Page | Zero Dark Thirty Review

Zero Dark Thirty is available on Blu-ray, DVD with Ultraviolet from June 10th. Pre-order now