Cory DeMeyers is the 2x Emmy-nominated Stunt Coordinator of the fourth and final season of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. This is Cory’s second Emmy nomination for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for his work on Season 4 of Gemstones. He received his first Emmy nom for Outstanding Stunt Coordination in 2024 for his work on Season 3. Season 4 is packed with jaw-dropping stunts and a surprise breakout performance from Bradley Cooper.
Cory stopped by to chat with us about working on the show.
Today we’re talking about your final season of The Righteous Gemstones. How does it feel to come to the end of it now?
It’s a bummer. I mean, it really, it really is. It’s sad. I’ve been working with that team since Halloween Ends which is what I met them on. Then later that year started with them on season three of Righteous Gemstones. And it is such a cool film family over there in Charleston that Danny and the Rough House guys have built. It’s bittersweet; I know that they’re going to create something amazing next, but it’s kind of sad to put a project to bed every time.
Danny McBride has been just a revelation with the stuff that he’s done. He started out with comedy and then he did Halloween and so on. What’s he like to work with?
Oh, he’s amazing. I mean, he is a consummate creator and professional and problem solver, and he’s really a brilliant director. Something that I’ve learned over the last two years is not only does he have a presence on screen and is also this amazing writer, but his directing abilities are top notch. I think one thing is that came through in the Civil War episode; that was his baby this season. He directed a few episodes this year, but the first thing that we did was that Civil War episode and I think that goes to show you how serious of a director he is.
Yeah. You’ve got the whole Civil War battle with like a hundred background actors. Can you talk about coordinating that and bringing it to life?
Yeah. I mean that battle sequence, the production thought that we were going to be able to do a rehearsal and then shoot it on the day. And the vision that Danny had for it was much bigger than what would be able to be accomplished in a day of rehearsal. I did weeks of pre-visualization with toy soldiers, right? I bought a ton of Confederate little army men, and I built it out on my kitchen island at the rental that I was staying in. I did overhead shots and sketched on my iPad where explosions were, and valley tracks and horses were running. So, I started there with visualizing the action based on Danny’s description and vision for it. Then once he agreed on that, we took it to a small video reference with the army guys to make sure the camera movements were correct and the placement, everybody was right.
Then we did a digital pre-vis as well with the VFX team. And then finally I was able to get our stunt team out to the location a week ahead of time. I was able to work through all of the individual stunts with them, the blocking, the choreography, and then start integrating our reenactors and our wranglers that were on horseback because there’s 12 wranglers on horses as well. The following Monday, I believe we ended up shooting the ambush stuff the first day. And then we shot the one or for the battle sequence, the neck on Tuesday. And so that Friday we were able to put it all together.
We had our reenactors, we had our wranglers, and we had all of our stunt performers. Everybody had rehearsed for the week and we’re able to get dolly track and a camera and essentially a camera team that I was able to lead. That way we could shoot a video reference for Danny to do the final sign off because it was such a big scene and we wanted everything to work, and we didn’t want to miss anything. We knew it was going to be complicated; we rehearsed with a camera and delivered him a camera rehearsal that Friday for him to review and sign off on. It was like weeks and weeks of prep. Then the physical side of that preparation was a week, right? So, we thought about this for a month and continued taking bites out of it, because we were shooting other pieces of other episodes before we got to do this. And then a week of rehearsal with the stunt team, dialing everything in a day of rehearsal with camera, which is really important when you do oners; your camera team has to be dialed in as well. You can’t just rehearse the action, expect that they’re going to show up and you didn’t know what’s going on. If that’s the case you’re going to have 18-hour day on your hands. But we finished that Civil War oner because of the time and preparation that we had with all of the departments.
We actually finished that before lunch. I think we finished an hour before lunch almost (laughs). But that just goes to show you what you can accomplish with proper rehearsals and proper preparation and real support from your production team and the creatives, that they understood what it took to get it done and they allotted for that and we were able to accomplish it in a really spectacular way.
How do you ensure the safety of the horses you’re dealing with, particularly whenever there’s explosions around? How do you keep the animals calm around that kind of environment?
That’s a really good question; we’re working with the American Humane Society as well. So not only does the wrangler come with the animals and the cowboys that are helping him wrangle those horses, but there are decibel levels and I can’t remember the exact level right now, but our Humane Society representative was amazing and she had done a few Westerns and she had worked with this wrangler before, so she already had a level of trust built in with him, but she still has to make sure everything goes according to their guidelines. And so, we had to keep the decibel rating of the explosions to a certain level and then at the exact same time, the request was, let’s not shoot these parts of the scenes excessively because even in an appropriate decibel level for the animals, after a few goes, they could still be spooked, not because of the noise itself, but because of the frequency of what’s happening. That was another reason it was really important to get the sequence done in a few takes and not spend an entire day doing it because eventually the horses wouldn’t want to cooperate and then we would be essentially in breach of the guidelines that the Humane Society and the wranglers wanted us to operate in. But our horses were amazing, they’d been on tons of Westerns.
One thing that we were able to do with our special effects team was pack those mortars with peat moss and other soft but somewhat dense materials that would help take some of the sound out of it. So, that way you bury some of that noise in the hole and in the mortar itself and it gets absorbed by the product and particles that you’re putting on top because there’s Fuller’s Earth and peat moss and all kinds of other things going in that mortar to throw the dirt up in the air. And then as far as placement goes, that was a part of the choreography. I had ideas of where I would like to place some of these explosions in order to fill the holes in the background, foreground, midground, and really make sure that the scene stayed busy. That was also something that I was thinking of and then constantly pitching to Danny and to our AD department is like, “hey, look, this action’s happening over here. We have a group of guys encroaching from the left while horses are riding through on the right”. We can set the mortar off after the saddle fall once we clear the horses because once the horses are gone, we’re going to have a little bit of a hole in our action, and I think it’d be nice to fill the space here. Then we can use an explosion in the foreground to give us an edit point.
That way because it wasn’t a true one-er and we didn’t do it as a true one-er for safety reasons. We wanted to eliminate points of failure for some of these bigger stunts and if we got to the end of that sequence and something went wrong and the take was blown, the guys that are doing the saddle falls off of the horses, which by the way, those are real saddle falls off of a moving horse, they’d have to go again. And the more times we do that, the more you increase your risk of injury. My pitch was, let’s shoot this in three sections and have very clever cut points. So, that way we’re eliminating points of failure and we’re not enhancing or increasing the risk of injury to our performers or our animals.
How do you know whenever you’ve found the right location to shoot a battle scene?
Well, thankfully the Civil War, although a very complicated issue, there are some battles fought in towns and in tree lines, a lot of battles were still fought in farm fields, right? On farms and open spaces. And so being in South Carolina, which was a part of the Civil War, there’s still massive swaths of land out there. There was a farm that we had used several times, Hamlin Farm, thousands of acres that this family has. And we were shooting some other set pieces there as well. And there’s, I mean, they probably have 14 or 15 different fields throughout the property. And they found one in the back and that was essentially tree lined on three sides. And so, it gave us this really interesting semi-boxed battlefield, but a beautiful background of the forest. So, that way it looked like maybe our troops had come from the forest into the battlefield. And that open field was amazing. What I’ll tell you wasn’t amazing was the red ants and all the little mites that they have in the South that are called chiggers, little red mites that will bite you, blister you up. During rehearsals, we got destroyed the first day or two (laughs). Everybody was running around with red ant bites and these little mite bites all over. That was just almost unavoidable. You’re on a farm. You are where these things live. So, that definitely made things miserable. And we all started wearing long pants in the high temperature and high humidity of the summertime in South Carolina. Everybody was in denim after that. But on the day, it was fine. Civil War period costumes are made out of wool. Everybody was very well protected and hydrating.
That’s the reality of filmmaking, kids.
(laughs) Exactly. Especially period pieces. You’re doing a period piece like you’re always going to be in heavy wardrobe if it’s medieval times and it’s military, whether it’s Civil War or World War II, you’re in wool and it’s usually wet or humid.
Humid is the worst.
Oh, it’s the worst. It’s the worst. But we had a lot of fun doing it, though. That’s the truth and that’s what matters.
In episode two, you’ve got that amazing jetpack sequence. Can you talk about putting that together?
Yeah, that jetpack sequence. It was another one that took us about, I mean, we thought about it since the inception. You get these early scripts, and you start looking at what’s written on the page. And even before we go to production with anything, you’re block shooting these episodes. So, you’re jumping back and forth between episodes all the time and that was a big one on the list for our team. And so, I thought about that for a good month or two, brought in an amazing stunt rigging team led by a good friend of mine, Kyle Weissar, who’s worked on films like the more recent Matrix films. He’s done some Mark Wahlberg projects. He’s an amazing stunt rigger. And so, I brought him out to help me with that. At the end of the day, after a few weeks of rigging, testing and rehearsing, we had strung over 7,000 feet of tech line throughout that auditorium in order to get our actors and our stunt doubles up there flying. And we had essentially created two different systems. We had one system that flew two actors at the same time.
For Adam and Edie, they were sharing a system. And then we had a separate system for Danny. And it was this awesome combination of programmable high-speed winches to create those moves and then hand-operated lines like you would do in a theater experience, right? So, if you’re flying Peter Pan across the stage before the winch technology was around, you would have hand-operated lines that had counterbalances on them to offset the weight of the performer. And so we use a combination of winches and hand-operated lines by stunt performers who are stunt riggers in order to fly our talent. We tried to use our actors as much as possible and rehearse with them and they all did a brilliant job. I know it’s nerve-wracking and can be scary at times and uncomfortable in a harness when you’re wearing a jetpack that, although fake, weighs quite a bit.
So, that’s kind of pulling on you while the lines are pulling on you too. All of our actors are all very game for the action, but also understand when it’s time to let the stunt performer step in because they know that we’re there to keep them safe and make them look as awesome as possible. Or, in the Righteous Gemstones case, as awkward as possible at times, you know?
It kind of bothers me that we don’t actually have jetpacks in real life yet. That really should be a thing by now.
(Laughs) I know. I know. We’re getting close. We’re getting very close.
Hopefully at some point. What is it that draws you to a project in terms of the challenge that it offers to get you interested?
Oh honestly, it’s so funny because I always come from this place of story first. One of my biggest mentors is Kevin Scott, who is a stunt coordinator and is an amazing second unit director. And he drilled that into me. I was always a fan of film. I was always a fan of action. But he also drilled in me that story is king. And he’s right. If we don’t have a story, we don’t have a movie, we don’t have a television show. And so, I think I really connect to story even before action. If it’s an interesting story, I think that’s what draws me in. Then I think the second thing that draws me in is looking at the action that’s written on the page and diving deeper into that. And how can we create action that enhances the story, right? Because sometimes you get very loose descriptions of action, which can be the best because it allows a very creative canvas for the stunt department to design and then pitch our directors and producers. Sometimes the action is very line for line exactly. The writer had an exact vision for this action. And that can be good and bad because when you’re dreaming it up in your mind, you don’t always understand exactly how that’s going to be executed.
Sometimes it’s actually more hassle than it’s worth to execute, so I always go story first. Then I look at the action that is in that story that I am already interested in and try to figure out, OK, what was the writer trying to convey with this action? And then if that’s a project that I take on or that I am accepted onto the team for, it’s a conversation with the director and trying to figure out, OK, how do you see this playing out? What now is your vision for the action? And then the challenge starts. There are almost three steps before you really get challenged into it. And then it’s like, all right, let’s how can I help them tell the story that they want to tell through the action? How can I advance the story? How can I help them develop the characters through the action that we’re doing? Because I think action is nonverbal dialogue. My challenge is, how do I tell the story that the director wants to tell through the action or the violence that we’re creating together?
I always discuss this with stunt coordinators and fight coordinators. Should an action scene always progress the story or character or progress the plot rather than just action for the sake of it? Should it tell a story in itself to progress things?
It should. It absolutely should. I have a lot of friends that are professional wrestlers and like wrestling is long term storytelling. It’s long term. There are storylines that have been going for 10, 15 years and pro wrestling. But then each match is its own story, whether it’s a two-minute match or it’s a 20-minute match. It’s nonverbal dialogue. And there is a beginning, a middle and an end to those matches. Even in those small vignettes of action and violence that we get to create you 100% need to advance the story. But you should be able to almost pluck it out on its own and you would at the very least have a beginning, middle and end. It might not resolve the movie, but it would resolve that particular scene.
What do you have coming up that you’re working on that you’re allowed to talk about?
Yeah, I just I just actually had the opportunity to coordinate and perform a little bit on a film called The Deputy that was shot in Mississippi with my friend Matt directing. I met him on Project Power. He was actually helping us at the time with some EPK stuff and is a brilliant filmmaker in his own right and has shot some amazing music videos and some commercial projects. He reached out to me while I was on the last season of Gemstones and said, “hey, Corey, I have this movie coming up. It’s a thriller with some really good action in it”. We have Duke Nicholson, which is Jack Nicholson’s grandson playing the lead. We have Steven Dorff, who I had just done two seasons of Gemstones with and Tiffany Haddish and Bill Macy. This is a little indie film and so, I went out to Mississippi for three weeks and shot this film with him and we got to do some fun action. I got to do an amazing pipe ramp for the movie. There’s a really cool car sequence in there with a pretty badass jump. I got to set that up and drive the vehicle and brought in my friend Joe Dryden to coordinate that part of the sequence so that way I could do the gag and feel comfortable that everybody on set was being looked out for and taken care of properly. The Deputy is picture locked and it’s still in post. Hopefully that’ll be coming out soon. I know they had some pre pre-sales at Cannes this year. As far as that’s the immediate project that I just finished.
Looking at a few other projects that I’m hoping to jump on to. But I have a short film called The Picnic. That’s an action comedy that’s been running the short film festivals. And actually, just the festival circuit in general. We’ve been able to play all over the US. We just got into our first festival in the UK. We’re playing New York in October. And we’re wrapping up this week at Holly Shorts in Hollywood, which is one of the biggest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world. I’m super proud that my tiny little action comedy made it into the festival. They said 7000 submissions and about 450 selections. So that’s cool. I just finished a project called Glory Days that I directed. It’s a 25-minute short film. It’s a horror comedy. Grumpy old men meets Friday the 13th (laughs) and it’s brilliant. These two old, retired slashers who are getting on each other’s nerves and challenging each other to one last hurrah to figure out who’s really the greatest. So, that hopefully we’ll be putting in festivals starting in September or October.
Yeah, that sounds very much up my street.
Awesome, good. I just locked Edit and Colour last week and we’re in Sound and Score and VFX now. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. There’s some fun action. There’s some really raunchy and ridiculous comedy and it’s a good time.
We’ll look forward to that. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.
No, absolutely. I’m glad we got it in. So glad to chat with you about it anyway.
Hopefully talk with you again soon about all the other projects.
Yes, sir. You got it.