Staking out the Stunts with Jeff Pruitt

 

Introduction

In this episode of OH!CAST, we present an exclusive Jeff Pruitt interview that takes listeners inside the world of Hollywood stunts and fight choreography. Jeff Pruitt is a veteran stunt coordinator, martial artist, and director whose work helped define the action style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and thrilled audiences worldwide with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. His journey from Georgia to Hollywood is a story of persistence, creativity, and the evolution of stunt work in television and film.

Early Career

Jeff describes how his fascination with samurai films, westerns, and Bruce Lee inspired him to pursue stunt work. Growing up in Georgia, he began working on film sets as an extra and camera operator before meeting stunt professionals who guided him into training and performing. His determination eventually led him to Hollywood, where he transitioned from stuntman to fight choreographer and later to stunt coordinator and second unit director.

The Changing Landscape of Stunts

The Jeff Pruitt interview highlights how stunt work has changed over the decades. In the 1980s, high falls, car jumps, and explosive set pieces were the hallmark of action films. Jeff recalls the Evel Knievel era of pushing boundaries with bigger jumps and more dangerous stunts. Today, much of that spectacle is achieved through CGI and green screen technology, reducing risk but also altering the artistry of practical stunts. His reflections show how technology reshaped the craft while preserving its creative core.

Power Rangers Experience

Jeff’s time on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was both a breakthrough and a challenge. He explains how the exaggerated, cartoon‑like fighting style was designed to excite children and inspire them to imitate their heroes. Every episode demanded inventive wire gags and gymnastic moves that kept the action fresh. While the show was a global success, it also created obstacles when Jeff sought work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Joss Whedon initially resisted hiring someone associated with Power Rangers. Thanks to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s encouragement, Jeff eventually joined Buffy and transformed its fight choreography.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The heart of the Jeff Pruitt interview lies in his Buffy years. Jeff and Joss Whedon collaborated to create a unique fighting style that blended martial arts precision with a rough, improvisational edge. Buffy’s battles were not polished dances but raw, unpredictable encounters that matched the character’s personality. Jeff often choreographed fights just an hour before filming to adapt to script changes and set limitations, ensuring every scene felt authentic and dynamic.

Working with Sarah Michelle Gellar

Jeff offers candid insights into Sarah Michelle Gellar’s role in the action sequences. While she was not a trained martial artist, her acting skills and presence carried the character. Stunt double Sophia Crawford performed the complex choreography, while Sarah delivered key shots that sold the illusion. Jeff explains how wardrobe choices, footwear, and camera angles were carefully planned to protect Sarah while still delivering exciting action. His anecdotes reveal the teamwork and trust required to make Buffy’s fights legendary.

Lessons from Stunt Coordination

Throughout the Jeff Pruitt interview, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the discipline and adaptability required in stunt work. Jeff emphasizes safety, creativity, and the balance between spectacle and storytelling. His reflections on both Power Rangers and Buffy illustrate how stunt coordination enhances character development and audience engagement, making action sequences more than just physical feats.

Conclusion

This Jeff Pruitt interview is more than a behind‑the‑scenes look at Hollywood stunts. It is a celebration of the artistry and collaboration that make action storytelling unforgettable. Whether you grew up watching Power Rangers or still revisit Buffy’s battles against vampires and demons, Jeff’s stories reveal the craft and passion that brought those moments to life. Tune in to OH!CAST for an episode that blends nostalgia, technical insight, and the human stories behind the punches, kicks, and falls that defined a generation of television.

Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)

00:00 Introduction to Stunt Coordination
00:28 The Journey into Stunt Work
04:16 Evolution of Stunt Techniques
07:02 The Impact of Technology on Stunts
09:19 Power Rangers: A Unique Challenge
12:05 Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Crafting the Fight Style
15:32 The Balance of Action and Character
18:48 Safety and Stunt Coordination
24:53 Reflections on Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Training
27:06 Navigating Relationships in the Spotlight
29:28 Perceptions vs. Reality: Actors and Their Roles
32:12 The Art of Stunt Coordination: Balancing Action and Character
34:30 Character Development Through Action: The Evolution of Buffy and Friends
39:09 Creating Unique Fighting Styles: Faith and Buffy
44:20 Close Calls: The Risks of Stunt Work
47:14 Behind the Scenes: Acting and Stunts in Star Trek
52:40 Training for the Role: Preparing for Vampire Combat
53:22 The Reality of Stunt Work
59:09 The Impact of Technology on Stunts
01:01:21 Reflections on a Stunt Career
01:13:26 Quickfire Questions and Final Thoughts

Full Transcript

Cal Macdonald (00:00.804)
Good evening, everyone. Do you know what the secret is to a truly unforgettable movie fight? Tonight, we’ll pull back the curtain and we’re talking to one of the legendary Hollywood stunt coordinators, Jeff Ruit. He bought a life, um, I’m echoing and that’s gone wrong. Okay. Right. Get rid of that. Get rid of that. Go, go, go. I’ll redo this. Scrub that. Okay.

And it’s still echoing somewhere. This is going fantastic, isn’t it?

Jeff Pruitt (00:35.788)
little bit.

Cal Macdonald (00:37.154)
Professionalism is through the roof here.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (00:37.933)
Well, it’s just stabilized.

Cal Macdonald (00:40.888)
Yeah. Okay. That’s that it.

Cal Macdonald (00:48.792)
I’m echoing someone.

Jeff Pruitt (00:50.094)
You keep freezing there, Cal, just a little.

Cal Macdonald (00:53.764)
There’s something’s gone. I’ve closed every single window and I’m still hearing echo somewhere. Is that at stop now? Okay. Well, everyone watching, is a good thing we edited all this stuff out.

Jeff Pruitt (01:10.455)
Yeah

Cal Macdonald (01:13.636)
So sorry about this.

Cal Macdonald (01:18.54)
to close everything doing so I lost my script there.

Okay. Okay. Good evening, everyone. What is the secret to a truly unforgettable movie fight? Tonight, we’re pulling back the curtain on a Hollywood action with a man who choreographed some of the legendary supernatural battles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and brought martial arts magic to the Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Welcome back to Ocast and with me tonight, our second show, Elena, how are you doing?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:54.678)
I’m doing great, excited to talk about stuns in Baffet Vampire Slayer.

Cal Macdonald (01:59.202)
Yep, yep, we are talking as we’ve now copyrighted it with you, the efficient violence of Buffy. So, but on to the veteran stunt coordinator, fight choreographer and a director as well. The one who gets punched takes the fall and makes our heroes look good. Geoff Pruitt, welcome to the show.

Jeff Pruitt (02:07.469)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (02:21.102)
Hello. Good to be here.

Cal Macdonald (02:22.436)
So welcome, really excited to have you. So I think just the, just start at the beginning, how did you get involved in film and TV? Did you have the bug as a kid or were you on a different path and then suddenly you went into stunt work?

Jeff Pruitt (02:39.5)
No, actually I did have to bug as a kid because I used to watch samurai films, westerns, especially when the Green Hornet television series came along. I was just a little kid. And when I saw Bruce Lee, that was it. That’s what I knew I wanted to do that, but I didn’t know how. And then eventually through the years studying the different stunt men and things, I thought, well, this is the path I’m going to go down.

I was actually in college when I started because some films came to Georgia. I grew up in Georgia in the USA and some films came to Georgia and I started going to Atlanta to work on films first as an extra, then as a PA, then as a camera operator and then gradually I met stunt people and started training and working with them and moving on and eventually

moved to Hollywood and kept going.

Cal Macdonald (03:40.196)
So basically the stunt bug was just, yeah. All right. And it was specifically stunts. You just wanted to do all that cool action stuff, essentially. That was it. And then from there, so like, what was your kind of first few stunt jobs? Like what was your kind of-

Jeff Pruitt (03:42.35)
So it was Bruce Lee. It was Bruce Lee that got me into stunt.

Jeff Pruitt (03:58.478)
I worked on a Chuck Norris movie. There were a bunch of low budget films and a young second AD on second unit on a Chuck Norris film in Atlanta met me and I showed him a demo tape I’ve been making with the guys in the backyard, know, fighting stuff. And he was talking about

the director of second unit was going to make this movie called Bloodsport and he wanted to try to bring me along to be one of the characters in that. And then I got injured and I couldn’t go and eventually I got into Hollywood and while I was there trying to get jobs on different films, this young second AD got a job directing a martial arts film. He started trying to call me back in Georgia to see if I could come to Hollywood, but I was already there.

Cal Macdonald (04:51.972)
All right.

Cal Macdonald (04:57.092)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (04:57.582)
So I just zoomed right over and said, hey, yeah, I’m here. And so we went to work and I started working and I kept going from there.

Cal Macdonald (05:06.756)
So just to get this right, take you start off as a stuntman and then go to a stunt coordinator or were you always a coordinator first? Or were they both at the same time?

Jeff Pruitt (05:13.55)
Right. Right. Well, I started, I started out. No, I had to work as a stuntman for a long time. And, and, know, and I grew up racing motorcycles and things like that and competing in martial arts. did all of that in the, in the seventies. And, and then by the time the late eighties came around, I was working as a stuntman. And then they wanted at that time.

Cal Macdonald (05:20.58)
to you.

Jeff Pruitt (05:42.42)
martial arts choreography wasn’t really a big thing in stunts in Hollywood. It was all cowboy style fights. And if they needed one, they would usually have one guy who had a little some martial arts skills, but not. I just because since 1966, I just focused on that on martial arts for them. So by the time I got there, I had all of these ideas I wanted to put on film. And so they would say, OK, OK, kid, we’ll give you a chance here. Choreograph a fight.

And I would go and I would choreograph the fight and it would work and they would go, wow. Then I would explain camera movement, camera angles to use, how to edit together. And so pretty soon they started going, well, let the kid do it, let the kid do it. And pretty soon, the next thing I know, I was choreographing fights for other people, for other stunt coordinators, and then gradually became the stunt coordinator myself and just went on from there and started directing second unit. So I would direct all of the action scenes.

Cal Macdonald (06:21.313)
Alright.

Cal Macdonald (06:37.389)
Yeah, quite cute.

Yeah, because for me, like I always remember the eighties, a lot of the stunt work was essentially explosions, falling, falling and burning kind of thing. You were either falling or burning or falling and burning in a lot of eighties action movies, wasn’t it? A lot of gun work.

Jeff Pruitt (06:51.32)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (06:57.526)
Right. and a lot of car jumps, remember? You remember all of the car action? were doing huge. People were trying. I remember when I started Stunts, they were thinking about how can we do a different car jump? Sometimes they would plan these elaborate, mean, Evel Knievel was the thing, With this big, everyone wanted to see who could jump the car the furthest or do a spin. Who could do the most rollovers, you know?

Cal Macdonald (07:03.299)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (07:26.944)
on a pipe ramp. used to have all of that. So that was like the big, the big part of stunts at that time, the biggest thing and high falls. Now today, we rarely do the big high falls that we used to have guys go off a hundred feet onto an airbag, know, big high falls off a building. But now we don’t have that. mean, we rarely have anything like that. It’s all with CG because you can just put a falling body from CG and have that.

or a green screen and you don’t really need to have someone go up that high. it’s just things change, you know, according to technology.

Cal Macdonald (08:06.883)
Yeah, someone just commented there every single episode of the E-Team when you mentioned car jumps.

Jeff Pruitt (08:13.548)
yeah. yeah. And, and, and I’ve worked with the writers and producers from, from A-Team and they, Steve Sears, know, who did, he was the producer and writer of Xena and he was the producer and writer of a show I did called Sheena, which I did after Buffy. But he said, he wrote some stuff for the A-Team, just getting elaborate with action scenes and wrote, and the stunt guys would be so excited. They wanted to do it, but the budgets would not allow it. It was just too much.

And today I think you could get away with it by mixing real stunts with CG stunts and you could actually pull it off. But to do what he had written in the script, you couldn’t do it. You would, would have to spend months just to do that. And you’ve only got like eight days and you’ve got to be finished with your show and moving to the next show. So on television, it was very difficult. They did some incredible stuff for what they were doing back then. Yeah, that was a lot.

Cal Macdonald (09:09.677)
Yeah, because TV all the way up till probably the end of the naughties was very breakneck pace it worked at. it was 24 episodes a season sometimes.

Jeff Pruitt (09:23.224)
Yeah. yeah. Yeah. We did. would do 22 season on Buffy when I did it and 22 episodes and I would I would be prepping one episode with the new director coming in while shooting the current episode and then picking up shots from the previous episode. So I would actually be working on three episodes at once every week while everyone else just worked on that week’s episode. I was on all of them all the time.

i sometimes i would just sleep on the sent that’s because i didn’t have time to go home

Cal Macdonald (09:57.045)
Jesus. Right. And just before we get to, I know what Elena’s really chomping at a bit, before Buffy, probably the one folk will know you for is Power Rangers. So like, what was that like? Cause that’s essentially quite exaggerated fighting. sorry. Sorry. Can you hear me now?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (09:58.874)
out.

Jeff Pruitt (10:16.291)
I’m missing what you’re saying, Kel.

Cal Macdonald (10:22.691)
I what’s going on. before you did Buffy, probably the big one folk will know you from is Power Rangers. And that’s quite different to a lot of the other ones, because that’s very exaggerated. It’s basically a living cartoon. So how did that differ in coordinating?

Jeff Pruitt (10:22.894)
Before you said before something

Alena Bihan-Gallic (10:23.235)
Yes.

Jeff Pruitt (10:33.608)
yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (10:41.516)
Well, you know, the funny thing about Power Rangers was I had been doing all of these martial arts movies, you know, with direct to DVD. I mean, back then it was VHS and, know, was back direct to VHS. so when I did Power Rangers, it turned out to be very, very successful around the world and everyone knew it. And so the people on Buffy, some of the crew people on Buffy said,

when they were going to start, you they got picked up and they said, okay, we’re going to, we want to bring the action up and everything. And you’ve got to bring in Jeff. And so as soon as Joss Whedon heard that I did Power Rangers, that was it. He didn’t want me. but I didn’t know. And so they would say, Jeff, make a demo for him. And I would go, okay. And said, what’s the show like? And he it’s like, it’s like, she’s the pink ranger. It’s like, you’ve got to show them what you did.

Cal Macdonald (11:23.714)
All

Cal Macdonald (11:35.351)
Hahaha

Jeff Pruitt (11:36.278)
show them what you did with the Pink Ranger, because Sophia was the Pink Ranger. would go, OK. So I would put a Power Ranger tape and send it. As soon as he saw one of Power Rangers, he would throw it away. He would go, because, and I didn’t know this, but the reason was when he was trying to pitch the show, different executives would say, so you’re going to do like a after school show starring the Pink Ranger kind of character, right? And it’s going to be for kids, right?

Cal Macdonald (11:46.947)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (12:04.278)
And he would go, no, no, it’s not like that. So it was, and in his mind, he hated that. So he hated Power Rangers. He was like, and it was, was, you know, I had to mimic the Sentai Japanese style. Plus I would add some very wild over the top wire gags and gymnastics that made no sense, but it was fun for the kids, right? Everything I did, I had, thought about what would the kids enjoy? And every day I would have to come up with something new for the kids.

Cal Macdonald (12:24.461)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (12:32.856)
But I was thinking in terms of this is for the kids, exciting the kids. wanted the kids to jump out of their chairs and start playing Power Rangers, right? So that was my goal. And we sold a lot of toys. It was very successful, but it was killing me trying to get, and I could not get to see Josh. And he would go, no, I don’t want to meet that guy. So they hired a new guy and they had him set up. was a top stunt coordinator, really big name stunt coordinator. And that was it. And they said, well,

Jobs over and Sophia said, well, that’s too bad. I wish you could have come. It would have been nice for us to work together on this show because I’m going to be there all the time. And I said, you know, we told Sarah and Sarah said, well, why won’t he meet you? And I said, well, because, you know, I’m the Power Ranger guy and I just found out he hates Power Rangers. So he won’t meet me. And she said,

Just let me talk to him. So she actually Sarah Michelle Geller went in and nobody knew who she was then. She was just this young actress. So she went in and she said, I want you to meet with him, just meet with him. And he said, I’ve already hired somebody. They’ve got the business big, big name guys coming in and we’re lucky to get him. So I don’t want to hear about it. And she said, well, just meet him. Just, just meet him. And she said, okay, I’ll meet the guy, but maybe I can use him somewhere down the road or something, but.

I’ll say hello to him, okay? And they called me. I was sitting there eating lunch. And they called me and said, okay, Josh says he can meet you for five minutes. And I went, oh crap, what am I, I don’t have anything prepared, you know? So I grabbed a tape. It was just a trailer that I had, a trailer for a movie that I had done with Sophia that had like some clips of me from another movie called Mission of Justice, where I got to play the side, I was.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (14:08.206)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (14:26.668)
I was choreographing the fights and doubling the lead actor and playing the lead actor sidekick. So I was all over it. So I just had a bunch of clips of me, you know, for the, was basically a stunt reel for me. So I just came in with that and sat down and I played it. And as soon as he saw it, he went, that’s Buffy. That’s Buffy. Buffy’s supposed to fight like that. So he said, can Sophia do that? And I said, yes, yes, she could do that. And he said, well, what, how?

How do you not make the guys look like they’re, because we always have these guys standing around and they come in and you, the lead character hits the one guy while the other’s standing, wait their turn. And then he goes down, then that guy comes in, he said, you’re making it look like they’re all fighting at once. I mean, how do you do that? So I jumped up out of my chair and I showed him, this is how you place the camera. This is how you place the stunt people. This is how, and I just did a quick combination. He went, you’re the guy.

Cal Macdonald (15:16.428)
You

Jeff Pruitt (15:25.174)
And he said, call the other guy. And so he told the executive producer, call the other guy. And they said, wait, we can’t, we’ve hired him. He said, I don’t care. This is the guy and that’s it. So from then on, was, it was us. We were making Buffy. And he said, make Buffy fight like you did in that movie. And I said, that will be Buffy. I promise. And it was, you know, that became the Slayer style.

Cal Macdonald (15:46.819)
I think, yeah. So I’m gonna direct this one at Elena, knowing that now, do you notice a difference in the fight style from season one to season two?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (15:47.193)
That’s great.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (15:58.97)
Do you know, I have to say like not really because also like it’s hard to like remember these like detailed fights. Although what I do notice that even though sometimes Buffy still fights in the later seasons in highly impractical clothing, it kind of like shifted to slightly, you know, like fight friendly attire in the second season. I recently watched it.

But I just wanted to say, it really worked, the strategy you had for Power Rangers, because I watched it as a kid and it’s just the moves were just setting me on fire. So I was trying to recreate them and there’s no record of that, fortunately. But I do, even though it’s like…

Cal Macdonald (16:51.597)
Hahaha

Jeff Pruitt (16:52.225)
Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (16:56.813)
different fighting style from what I can tell in Buffy. I still get this joy from watching the fight scenes because it’s this combination of really sophisticated moves, but at the same time, sometimes you will just smash the vampire into a wall and it really gives you this sense of she’s getting the job done.

So it’s just joy to watch, I just wanted to say.

Jeff Pruitt (17:28.462)
What I tried to do was make martial arts action, but also have a rough edge to it because a lot of the time when guys come in and they’re martial artists and they want to make a martial arts fight, they make it too dancey, know, they’re too posey. Like, and it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening because everyone’s just going, you know, one, two, three, four. You can tell they know exactly what.

But we don’t, you can do that in Hong Kong, but we didn’t want that. And this is what Joss and I had discussed was how do we make it like she’s doing martial arts, like a martial arts movie, but you also got to have the rough edge around it where you’re slamming into stuff, you’re breaking stuff, you’re going in and awkward things happen too. So it’s, it’s got to be that combination. So that was the combination of East and Western styles mixed together that

that made Buffy. That’s what I had done on shows like this Mission of Justice I talked about. That was with Jeff Wincott starring in that. people saw that and they thought, yeah, that’s what we want for Buffy. But Joss said, that’s what we want for Buffy too. Can you make her more like that? So that’s what we did. And it worked. And it worked really well.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (18:46.819)
Well, guess also because Buffy is one of the main traits of that character and why also she’s relatable despite being a superhero is that she kind of improvises heavily and it’s almost like the fact that she fights vampires, like sometimes it almost feels like, it’s the same to her as filing her nails.

which she also does from her looks. So that fighting style kind of really goes with it, with her approach, I find. So it’s great.

Cal Macdonald (19:26.711)
Yeah, I’m a mouse.

Jeff Pruitt (19:27.31)
Yeah, well, one thing we would do is Joss and I would, before every episode, we would have our production meeting, right, with the director and with the whole crew, all the department heads, and then they would go away and Joss and I would have our own meeting privately just to talk about action. And I would tell him my ideas for this script, what I wanted to do, what I had in mind. And then he would tell me what.

what I could probably get away with and what I couldn’t get away with. We would have like A, B, and C kind of rough plans. And then I learned that I couldn’t, unless it was a big fight that we pre-planned in advance, almost all of the fights, I would choreograph one hour before the fight, one hour before shooting, because I learned that there were so many changes going on with Buffy and the script and things would change and…

Our schedule would change, everything was changing and I would have to be ready. So I would wait to choreograph. I would have an idea based on what Joss and I talked about, but then I would wait to intricately choreograph everything one hour before. And that made it possible to adapt and everything, make everything fresh and based on the set, what the final set turned out to be and how much time I had, you know.

Cal Macdonald (20:52.931)
I this is something I hear often when watch making of documentaries is how much did Sarah want to do? How much did you have to tell her, no, you can’t do that? Was she very keen to do it all herself?

Jeff Pruitt (21:04.146)
can’t hear you, can’t hear you, Kevin.

Jeff Pruitt (21:09.55)
Sorry man, you’re breaking up again. There it is.

Cal Macdonald (21:11.971)
All right. I would say like, can you hear me now? Yeah, saying with Sarah particularly, did you have to hold it back a lot? Did she want to do a lot of stuff herself? Was she very keen to do a lot of the fights?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (21:16.846)
Yes.

Jeff Pruitt (21:26.872)
Who, Sarah? No, because I mean, typically this is where I’m different from other stunt coordinators. You’re supposed to sit there and say, the actor was incredible. But she didn’t really have any martial arts skills at all. She was like a young, imagine just a young girl, a young 100 pound girl. And that was it. So she had kind of in…

Cal Macdonald (21:27.821)
Sierra.

Jeff Pruitt (21:55.086)
Originally, you know, remember Julie Benz, right? The actress Julie Benz was on the… Originally, they considered Julie Benz was going to play Buffy and Sarah was going to play Cordelia, which she would have been great at. I mean, she’s excellent. She could… Either one, she could play perfectly. But Sarah would thought, well, I would like to be the star if I could. So she told them a little…

White Live, which actors do all the time, which was that she had this martial arts background. so the producers told me when I met them, said, I mean, I knew Sophia was doubling Sarah and I already knew that she couldn’t do martial arts. But when I met the producers, the first thing they said was, well, when you start making these fights, you got to think about Sarah because, you know, it

The first day, as soon as we got out there, we saw this girl doesn’t know anything about martial arts. And I said, don’t worry. You know, she knew what a back fist was and she knew what a front kick was. So it’s just a matter of getting her to start the motion. And then we cut to Sophia doing the kick or whatever it is. And that’s all we need. We just need her action, her upper body action to start it. And then I’ll have her stake the guy at the end.

and then you’ve got it, we can move, we can get a lot done that way. So, but no, no, she never, she never was like, let me do this. Today, she’s probably like that because she’s actually more physical today after getting married to Freddie. This is the funny thing too about it is, well, during the making of Buffy, she would sit in her chair and just read fashion magazines while we made the fight. And then I would bring her out and do those three shots, three or four shots, right?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (23:23.673)
So.

Jeff Pruitt (23:48.93)
two to four shots we’d do with her. And then that was it. And she would often just wear her tennis shoes. We had a plan, what we called the Buffy boots. We would try to make the fight scenes happen while Buffy was wearing these particular boots, which was easier for Sophia to fight in. And we would try to make the clothing. Like you were talking about the wardrobe, like say in the prom outfit, she had to do some fighting and that. Things like that was difficult.

but we tried to make it most of the time when she was fighting to be wearing something that you could move in with the pants that would stretch and move and wearing those, what we called the Buffy boots. But Sarah would just wear tennis shoes because you didn’t even have to see her feet. So she would come out there in her tennis shoes, we’d do our shots and she would go back and sometimes she would just stay in the trailer and do other stuff because she had so many changes in the script.

she would be getting changes to the next scene she was going to have to act in. This is what amazed me about the actors on Buffy was they would get new versions of the script. They had already prepared themselves to do a scene and now the script has changed to where that scene is different. It’s completely different. The dialogue is different. So she would be in the trailer going over her dialogue for the next thing and she knew we were taking care of the fight. She wasn’t worried about the fight.

So then she would come out and do whatever we asked her to do. And that was it. So no, she was never like going crazy about wanting to do anything because she knew, you know, there’s no reason, you know, just get injured. we learned also, I remember it was in some fight where we had two actors together and one of them hit the other. wasn’t Sarah, but it was in, and we decided, look, let’s just make a rule where

Cal Macdonald (25:25.539)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pruitt (25:45.688)
we’re shooting over the shoulder when an actor’s getting punched in the face and we’re showing the actor’s face, only a stunt person is swinging at him. But in that way, so we never had a shot where an actor was hitting another actor in the face. It was always a stunt double hitting the actor in the face. And that way we never had that danger of actors hitting each other because what would happen is if we tried to use a shot where

Okay, now we’re going to have these two actors hitting each other. I, what I would do is just have one quick moment where they did one, two and stop, but not really hit each other. Because if we tried to do more than that, they would get excited. And the next thing you know, somebody’s got a bloody nose or something. And we can’t, because you can’t, even though they would love to do more fighting, the thing is if one actor, I had this happen on another show where,

And it wasn’t in a fight scene, but he had to do a fight scene with me. And he showed up on the set and his eye was closed like that. And I said, dude, what happened? I thought he got stung by a bee or something. And he said, well, it turns out he was a of a very romance-oriented guy.

So he met a fan who really liked his character. And next thing you know, they wind up having a romantic interlude at a hotel. So he comes to the set the next day. Everything’s great. He’s happy. And then this guy comes up. And the guy asked him, he said, you’ve met my wife. And he said, lovely. Yes, yeah. And the next thing you know, boom, he’s punched in the face because he had slept with the guy’s wife.

Now I had to do a fight scene with this guy. His whole face is closed up. So I’m trying to shoot on this side. I’m like, my God. And then you should have seen the director’s face. The director came and the director had to shoot the entire episode, acting scenes with this guy with one side of his face totally closed up. he was using light. He had like shadows. He had leaves like the guy would be.

Jeff Pruitt (28:09.986)
the other actors mostly talking, then they would do hi. It was terrible, but there’s nothing we could do because the lead actor, his eyeball was closed and it took two weeks for his eyeball to open back up. So that’s why things like that, we thought we can’t have them getting hit in the face and with Sarah especially because she was kind of frail. I said to the stunt guys, you do not must her hair, do not even shake her.

Do you understand me? And they were like, yes, yes, okay. So they were very, very careful and gentle with her to make sure she never ever would get hit in the face or hurt in any way. And, Sophia, I said, sorry, Sophia, you’re toast, man. And she, I would say as far as Sophia goes, guys, just pummel her. It’s no problem. She can take it, you know? So that’s what, that’s what, that’s the way we did it.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (29:07.917)
Yeah, was thinking exactly about that. Like when you look at the actor’s physique, and in this case specifically, Sarah, you know, it’s just like actors doing their own stunts, unless they are really into it and long term train, their bodies are just not ready to handle it in many ways. Right. So

Jeff Pruitt (29:31.854)
Right. Well, you have like the guy who plays Thor. He and his stunt double are very close. They train together. Their bodies are very similar. Sophia did try to get Sarah to train, but she would go, there was like some, I forget, it was like some super expensive gym that Sophia had to join and she would go down there to train Sarah. at that time, I mean, she’s different now. I’m sure she’s all grown up now.

but she was a kid and she was becoming a star. She was becoming like this it girl and she just wanted to go there and meet other actors and socialize. Sophia could not get her to do anything to help her to build up. So that was the way it was. I’m sure, like I said, after she met Freddie. Now, Freddie, this is a funny story about Freddie. I did go to some one of these convention things and they were asking me about

Sarah’s fighting and I said, no, she’s the best actress I’ve ever seen in my life, but she’s not really a real martial artist. And I said, now her spouse, Freddie, Freddie is a real martial artist. He did martial arts, he did boxing, he does jujitsu. mean, this guy, he loved pro wrestling growing up. He could have been a stunt man. As a matter of fact, if he had been a stunt man, I would have hired him to be Angel Stunt Double and he and…

Sarah would have still gone out and gotten married. Same thing. Because she dated, you know, I set her up on a date with Angel Stuntdouble one time. you know, she was, so she would have said the same thing she said about Angel Stuntdouble. She said to me, at that time, all these guys were coming after her. mean, producers, agents were trying to get her to go out with their client who was on another show. They thought it would be good, you know, good publicity to have two actors together. And it was just like,

Cal Macdonald (31:01.603)
you

Alena Bihan-Gallic (31:07.705)
you

Jeff Pruitt (31:27.81)
She just wanted a nice guy, somebody that she was compatible with. And so she saw the angel stunt double that I had and she said, he’s cute. And I said, really? I said, I’ll set you up. So I set him up on a date. But then afterwards, this is how young she was. never thought of Sarah, she was still a teenager at that time. And I never thought of her as a teenager. I always thought of her as being my age because she was so

Super intelligent and so good at her job. So when they came back from the date I remember I started grilling the guy and I said, you know Did you how did it go? He was like, well, yeah, she’s nice, but she’s just a kid man She only she only knows how to talk about herself. He said I want a date and I said, what do mean? Maybe it’s you you ever think about that? Maybe you should learn how to talk to her because she can talk about any I was like coming down on him He was like easy easy broke

And I said, well, did you kiss her? Yes or no? Just tell me. And he was like, are you going to fire me? And I said, no, just tell me. He said, well, yeah, I mean, I did. But it’s just like, you know, we can be friends. I just don’t want to date her. I said, look, go back. Go back to the set, man. I don’t want to talk to you because you don’t know how to talk to a girl. And he was like, OK, but so I was like over. I realized when he walked away, I was like, oh, my God, I’m only supposed to protect her from

Cal Macdonald (32:48.844)
Hahaha

Cal Macdonald (32:55.711)
You

Jeff Pruitt (32:56.77)
from injury. I don’t have to protect her in her real life, you know, but finally she met Freddie. And when I went to this convention, the fans were talking about, and this shows you how people think they were talking about martial arts. And I said, well, you know, she, didn’t really do martial arts back then. She was just, you know, a great actress. And I said, but Freddie is this incredible martial arts guy. And they looked at me and they said, what? Freddie Prince?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (33:00.345)
Ha

Alena Bihan-Gallic (33:26.073)
you

Jeff Pruitt (33:26.082)
Because, and I really, they said no, Sarah would kick his head off. Are you kidding? I would say no, Sarah won’t kick anybody’s head off. What are you talking about? So I realized, they look at Freddie because Freddie did rom-coms, you know, he was this like boy band type image that he had, you know, this cute guy image. And then Sarah was this super fighting slayer chick. So I thought that’s the image they have of them in real life. It’s not, it’s the other way around.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (33:44.217)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (33:56.056)
Freddie is the one who will kick your head off and Sarah is just, you know, cute girl. the image that people have, that’s one thing I realized from Buffy is when I talk to people, the image they have of the actors versus the real life thing, that is incredible, the difference. I won’t say who it is, but one of the actors I was at this thing with and the fans came up and they started asking me why he was laughing that way.

And I said, what do you mean? He makes these kind of jokes and then he puts on this phony laugh. Why is he doing that? And I thought, what are you talking about? And I saw he was just being himself. He was laughing. That’s the way he laughs. But he didn’t laugh that way on the show. On the show, he played a character. They thought that character, that’s the way he must be in real life. They didn’t realize those are two different people.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (34:51.161)
Yeah, of course.

Jeff Pruitt (34:55.83)
It just looks and sounds similar, but it’s two different personalities. Same way Sarah is nothing like Buffy. you know, all of the they’re all different. Everyone’s different, you know, because these are just characters on a piece of paper that a great actor looks at and goes, OK, I know how to interpret this. I’ll make this real. And that’s the that’s the one thing I learned from Buffy is sometimes people in in fandom get really carried away with the

characters and sort of put those character traits onto the real life person and it’s so different.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (35:32.249)
Mm.

Cal Macdonald (35:34.071)
Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (35:34.977)
And of course, yes, sorry, Callum, did you?

Cal Macdonald (35:37.923)
Sorry, I was going to ask a question there, but you kind of answered, said, cause that really is the best kind of review you could have ever gotten that people believe Sarah is an ass kicker, like you said, cause that was kind of down to a lot, to make this tiny little frail girl seem like she could beat the crap out of a vampire, like.

Jeff Pruitt (35:38.286)
Thanks.

Jeff Pruitt (35:56.375)
Right. If you think about how, well, I said to, when I first started the show, we were talking about, okay, this is, and then the, the vampires that have want to kill Buffy. And then I just, I just stopped one day when we were walking on the set, I said, these vampires are, you’re telling me like they can get mansions and get somehow to get electricity. They can get cars. They can do whatever they want to do.

but they can’t just park outside her house and when she comes out, just shoot her in the head. Why can’t they just get a gun? He said, dude, you think too much. Stop thinking. said, and I realized, I realized he’s right. If you stop and think about the concept of Buffy, it’s too stupid. if you, because when I told people about the show, I would try to tell them, and these are people in show business. I would tell them, I’m doing, they’re going, my God, dude, you’re gonna make that show?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (36:31.929)
Ha ha ha.

Cal Macdonald (36:31.949)
Hahaha!

Jeff Pruitt (36:52.558)
I wouldn’t put my name on that, you know, that’s what they would say. And I would go, you know, but you should see the writing. It’s different. It’s going to be different. So, but then when people started watching it and this is, this is the thing you’re talking about, uh, people believing that Sarah was doing all of this stuff. It’s the writing was so good and, and, and the atmosphere they created that it would lean toward, toward, uh, sitcom comedy. would lean toward drama and romance.

It would lean toward action and you were just kind of, were so involved with those characters, you follow them along and then you want to see what’s going to happen next with these guys. And that’s when you know you’ve got something. When you have a show like that, when the people are involved with the characters, that’s when they care about the fights. Otherwise, it’s just some stunts and it’s cool to watch. then between the stunt action, like on Hong Kong films, I used to…

just rent Hong Kong films and cut out everything except the fights and just have a reel of stunts. All the stunt guys did that. We would have stunt reels of Hong Kong action because nobody wanted to sit through the dialogue, right? But on Buffy, I was actually, that was the one show I worked on that I actually would watch myself, you know, just as if I didn’t work on it or if it didn’t matter, I would sit back and watch the show and actually enjoy it.

Cal Macdonald (38:13.219)
Okay. Okay, good.

Jeff Pruitt (38:15.562)
even in and just forget forget that i had worked on it i would just watch the show and go well it’s a good show

Cal Macdonald (38:20.717)
Yeah, that answers the question we had up on the screen there. He was asking, have you watched all of it yourself? So it’s like one of those rare things. It’s something you made that you enjoy for yourself. You’re able to separate yourself from it, aren’t you, when you watch it?

Jeff Pruitt (38:28.12)
So, yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (38:37.39)
I’m sorry, couldn’t hear you, Kel.

Cal Macdonald (38:38.659)
Oh, I don’t know what it is. But I’m not saying there’s a question on the screen there. Someone asked, did you watch all of it yourself? But it’s one of the few things you’re able to watch independently of knowing you were involved with it.

Jeff Pruitt (38:46.208)
yeah. I’ve watched…

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that Buffy and Star Trek are the two that I would watch, that I worked on. And Batman, I watched that and things like that. a lot of the shows, like I love making Power Rangers, you know, and it was, but as far as me watching it, I was too old for it, you know, but making it, I would get into the mindset of it and make it, you know. So, but.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (39:13.795)
Ha

Alena Bihan-Gallic (39:20.557)
I wanted to ask, because you were also, I assume, involved in preparing stunts for the other cast members, but of course they were not supernaturally gifted. But you can tell, especially as the seasons progress, that Willow and Xander and Giles, have some tricks up their sleeve as well.

So could you speak a bit about how you designed the different stands for different characters, depending on what their role was?

Jeff Pruitt (39:54.978)
Well, it’s funny because I predicted this when I got on the show when we started. They started letting me make the fights bigger for Sarah for for Buffy. The Buffy fights got a little bigger. And then when I first started the show, Angel, if you if you watch first season, you’ll see Angel is wearing a white shirt and he’s like he’s like he comes in and he watches and he’s sort of there to give Buffy some advice and help. But

The first fight that I did with Buffy, Angel trips and falls and Buffy comes and saves him and that kind of thing. So I said to Joss, and I knew what it was, Buffy, there’s a Japanese anime called Yoko Devil Hunter. And Joss and I, one of the things that we talked about when I first met him was anime.

and all these different anime. If you watch a lot of his shows, they’re all based loosely on these different anime that he watched. And the one I mentioned was Yoko. And it’s because, you know, she’s into so many generations. A new Devil Slayer is born and her watcher is her grandmother. And then there’s another…

She dies briefly and then they I think she has a cousin or something who comes and they have two slayers at once and all of these different things and there was a character her friend was a girl who was good at computers and the and the girl’s friend who was really in love with Yoko it was all of these different elements that were all they were put into the Buffy script and I’d noticed this character that was like angel who was watching and he was always

being saved by Yoko. so Buffy was always saving Angel. And so I said to him, you know, I get it. He said, yeah, this is like the, said, because when I grew up, the guy was always saving the girl. The girl would always trip and fall and the guy would come and save her. And so I’ve kind of reversed that. And he said, but I had that on Power Rangers, know, Saban was always telling me the girls will trip and fall and then the guys will come and save her. But then I made them equal.

Jeff Pruitt (42:09.678)
I made them all equal. they they’re superheroes and they’re all equal in their fighting the baddies. And he said, can’t we make Angel more equal to Buffy? I said, can I have Angel throw a kick in a punch and knock out some guys? And he said, oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I said, well, let me just throw a couple of kicks. He said, OK, one kick, one kick. And it was in this fight scene where the vampires are getting blood for from a blood bank.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (42:11.192)
and

Alena Bihan-Gallic (42:38.678)
Yes, yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (42:39.094)
and the car pulls up. So that time I had a guy double Angel and do a kick and knock him into the car. And then we sort of like had them fighting side by side equally rather than just a little bit from Angel. And Buffy was the killer fighter, but Angel was not. Then when they became equals, everybody liked it. And then we went on with the Buffy Angel romance, making them equal. And that was one big change that I brought to it.

And then once that happened, told Jaws, said, okay, now that I’ve made Angel a kick-ass guy, I said, I’ll bet you, you’re gonna start hearing other cast members and they’re gonna want to do more action. And sure enough, they said, that’s what you’re talking about. Because as we went along, all of a sudden Giles, who was this mild mannered clumsy guy, suddenly he’s going to sword fight because, you know, everybody wants to do fighting now. Everybody wants to get in and I understood.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (43:19.331)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (43:36.558)
We did, but then there was a time when it was getting to be too much. said, you know, it might be taking away from Buffy as the superhero of the show to have everyone knocking out vampires. You know, we’ve got to tone that down. He said, you’re right. We’ve got to tone that down. but there was, yeah, there was a, so we had to figure out a way, how can we involve all of the Scoobies in the action without making them outshine Buffy and.

and this kind of thing, but Angel, he could still be as strong as Buffy. So that’s what we did. And it worked that way. It worked. It worked great.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (44:17.145)
And of course then we have Faith in the third season. So did you try to develop like different fighting styles for them because they’re supposed to be like kind of like a shadow of each other?

Jeff Pruitt (44:21.534)
I will.

Jeff Pruitt (44:27.948)
Yeah, were what what happened what happened with faith was he told me that, OK, we’re going to introduce the subject. He told me all about faith. He said, so I’m going to I’m going to have you go in to the her manager’s house and pick her up, bring her back to your place and have her practice that because I had Sarah practice that Sophia’s pose, you know, I said, just snap it, pose like Sophia do this. So I said, take her.

and do the same thing with her and train her any way you can. But he said, this is the thing about the character Faith that we’re going to introduce. said, Faith has been abused and she has these psychological issues. She really has a lot of anger in her. whereas Buffy is kind of adjusted to her role as a slayer and what she has to do and how to get through it. Faith has

just she’s got this anger she wants to kill and Buffy has to like stop her sometimes because she’s she goes crazy and so I remember I got on the on the Buffy the bronze you know the Buffy online group and I told him I had this this character but she’s sitting here with me but I can’t tell you anything about her and they were all dying and said I said just wait you’re gonna see there’s gonna be a new character on the show and

The very first fight, had Karen Shepard doubling Faith and Sophia. And we did this fight, well, the first fight I did was just introducing Faith and that was at the bronze. But the next fight was one where they wrote into the script about her pounding this guy. And that guy, that vampire, if you see that fight out in the construction yard, like with Buffy and Faith fighting together.

And then Buffy looks over and she sees Faith on top of this vampire pounding him. That vampire is David Leitch, who is the director of Atomic Blonde and what’s the one with John Wick, you know? So he’s the director of all of those films and Nobody, you know? So back then…

Jeff Pruitt (46:51.418)
we were talking here now we’re talking about starts and and and fight scenes and stuff and i told him he kept saying why can’t we do this what can we do that you don’t understand because i’ve got so much time in in other people when you’re when you’re the stunt coordinator you’re trying to be second-year director of the company you’ll find out you have all these other people of the chefs telling you what you can and can’t you want to do things you’ll you’ll try to get it

you might get maybe one third of what you really want to do. And that’s how it would be. And then he started doing a second unit and he realized, yeah, that’s true. And he said, how can we get more action? And I said, well, the only way is if you could become the producer and the director yourself and have enough money in the budget. said, but that’s never gonna happen. No stunt guy is ever gonna do that.

And then the next thing I knew, he made this thing called John Wick and it was such a hit because they had become friends with Keanu. So Keanu helped them and Brad Pitt helped them. And then they made these movies. And then once that happened, now he can do all of the action he wants. And it’s just incredible. But if you look at that fight scene, that’s Dave. Dave getting pounded by my faith. But faith is…

Alena Bihan-Gallic (47:48.216)
Mm.

Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (48:03.939)
Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (48:10.765)
That’s a good one.

Jeff Pruitt (48:17.342)
Yeah, we’re demonstrating her personality and every single character on the show, I would go off to the side with Jaws and talk about these characters, what their personality was, so that it fit with the script. And if it were just random vampires popping up in the graveyard fight or something, I could have them do martial arts or not do martial arts or be this. It didn’t matter. But I just…

randomly do whatever I wanted, but when it came to main characters like say Angel or Riley or Spike or Faith and they they had to fight a certain way do things a certain way and they had a reason for doing things their personalities like but you’ll see the episode where Buffy and Faith switch bodies and they’re fighting in the church that that pounding and thing that I recreated that

Alena Bihan-Gallic (49:11.011)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (49:16.064)
there because that was Faith being angry. That was her anger coming out again. And it was the same thing that we had done in the very first fight where she was pounding a vampire. She’s fighting with Buffy and she’s got all of her anger, but she’s in Buffy’s body. So that’s a different personality. That’s not Buffy’s personality. They do the same techniques, but they do things in a different way.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (49:33.593)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pruitt (49:47.01)
Faith has issues, man. It does.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (49:48.588)
Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (49:48.789)
You

So we have, can you hear me okay now, Jeff? Had to reset there. Okay, hopefully this holds out now. We’ve had a question come in there. I will stick it on the screen. Gosha is asking, I imagine stunts don’t always go perfectly. I ever had a close call on mishap while filming.

Jeff Pruitt (49:55.724)
Mm-hmm. Yo.

Jeff Pruitt (50:12.938)
Yes. What happened was, do you remember the episode where there’s a hunter who he lays a net for Buffy and Buffy steps on the net and it pulls and it closes up around her and he comes up and he’s hunting. Yeah. And he comes up and pokes her with the gun and she’s in the net. Remember that? So the net, the special effects guys set this net up and there’s, goes up to a big crane.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (50:22.093)
Yes.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (50:26.851)
when he’s hunting for werewolves.

Jeff Pruitt (50:42.602)
and there are some counterweights, sandbags in the bag. And I saw how much weight they were using. It was like 300 pounds. They were going to drop off this 18 step ladder. And I said, guys, that’s too much, too much weight. I said, all it takes is one guy to hold the rope and sit down. It’ll close up because Sophia weighs like 105 pounds, 110 pounds max. And I said, you got to back off of that. And then he went, OK, OK, OK. So they took the weight off.

Well, when I walked away, they, the, the special effects guy got angry. said, who, who is this stunt guy telling me what to put the weight back on? So he put the weights back in there. So we didn’t know, you know, Sophia steps on the net and the weights drop and she shot straight up. went, we had a crane, a camera on the crane. went past the camera, past the crane came out of the net and she was falling.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (51:40.057)
Oof.

Jeff Pruitt (51:40.182)
And as a matter of fact, if you go to my YouTube channel in the second season, I’ve got all of this behind the scenes of Buffy footage. And if you go there, you can see this net gag happening. And what happened is she came out of the net and she was able, while she was falling, she was able to hook one heel and put her fingers in the net on the outside. And she caught herself and snapped her neck back.

just a couple of feet before she hit the ground. And she had whiplash really bad, but she was okay. And I ran in and got her and it scared me so bad. I said, man. So I took her back to the trailer and I said, okay, that’s it. So just in case this happens again, I think we should get married. And she said, okay. So that was the night I asked her to marry me. It’s the fault of the stunt.

the special effects guys, made me marry her, man. So I got scared. I got scared and I was too afraid to ask her to marry me before, but they brought it out of me, man. I just got so scared. said, we gotta get married because you’re bound to get killed sooner or later. So that’s what happened.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (52:39.501)
haha

Alena Bihan-Gallic (52:48.633)
Thanks.

Cal Macdonald (52:48.64)
Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (52:55.01)
And gosh, and gosh, it’s just pointing out, she literally just watched that episode for the first time today. That’s why she was asking. Coincidences.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (52:55.765)
wow, that’s great.

Jeff Pruitt (53:03.919)
wow.

Cal Macdonald (53:08.482)
Also, I’m curious, because I’m big Star Trek fan, you worked on Deep Space Nine and Voyager, didn’t you?

Jeff Pruitt (53:17.816)
yes, yes I did.

Cal Macdonald (53:19.714)
So what was that like? Was it coordinating or just stunt work you did there?

Jeff Pruitt (53:26.286)
Well, I would just come in, the stunt coordinator was Dennis Matalon. He did all of the Star Trek’s in the 90s, you know. And I would just go in and be, you know, the guy in the red shirt they used to call it on Star Trek, you whoever gets killed, I would come in and I did multiple episodes of that. But one time, it was funny because one time, this was Deep Space Nine, he said,

Cal Macdonald (53:40.299)
All right.

Jeff Pruitt (53:53.006)
He wanted to just get one of the stunt guys and the director was a race car driver and he was really a friend of the stunt community. Dennis was saying to the director, hey, let me just have one of the stunt guys play this acting part because then we can just start fighting. I don’t have to worry about doubling or anything. And they said, yeah, but they want to bring the actors in. And he said, well, look, I’m just going to take this guy.

this guy, Jeff, he showed me, he showed my picture to the director, said, I’m just going to take this guy, you see how he looks. He looks, you know, like he could be an actor, right? So I’m just going to stick his, his picture in with the stack of resumes that they’re going through and that have made it through. So casting, you know, I went in there and I just, I’m sitting there with all of the actors and I got up and auditioned for, for part, and it was a guest starring role, right? And I just acted.

military because that’s all it was. It was just guy acting and I got the part. And so we didn’t tell anybody, we didn’t tell anybody that I was a stunt guy. I went there, I did all of the acting scenes, all of the other actors were super nice. It was really, really, really cool, cool set to work on. And then the time came time for the fight scene. And as soon as the fight scene starts, I throw myself down the stairs and everything and

And then he picks me up and hits me in the nose and shoves me back against the rail. And then he knocks me over the rail. And I remember one of the actors, one of the lead actors jumped up and he just said, stop, stop this. And he went over to Dennis and he said, Dennis, what are you doing, man? Where’s his stunt double? And then Dennis said, actually he is the stunt man. And he said, we let him just say some words, you know, and he said,

Alena Bihan-Gallic (55:44.994)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (55:50.126)
God, he said, I thought you were killing one of our actors. And he said, but what he did a good job. So he was, he was upset because the actor didn’t have a stunt man, but I was a cement. But a similar thing happened on Buffy where one of our producers used to be an actor and he never really, you know, he never really made it as an actor. was, he was from Wales. Actually, he came over and produced a show called Remington steel.

Cal Macdonald (55:53.356)
Yeah

Alena Bihan-Gallic (56:00.634)
You

Cal Macdonald (56:00.788)
Alright.

Jeff Pruitt (56:19.882)
And on Remington Steel, he was really, he became really abusive toward the stunt crew. And he just abused this one stunt guy all the time. And then finally he fired him, just fired him right off the show. So then, and I always wondered why he had a thing against stunt people, because he was always making some snarky comments about stunt people, right? But then he would turn around and laugh and, I was just kidding, Jeff. But what had happened was after he had fired this stunt guy, he was at some

Ritzy restaurant in Beverly Hills. And he was standing out front waiting to go in the restaurant and he ran into the stunt guy and he said something then, but he forgot the stunt guy wasn’t working for him anymore. He didn’t care. So they, the stunt guy just wound up smacking him around, picking him up and dumping him into a trash can. So he was upside down in the trash can. So he, he hated stunt guys after that. So

When we got on Buffy, he was always talking about how stunt guys can’t act, stunt guys can’t act. I don’t even want to say. And, and, and so one of the stunt guys did the same thing as me. He auditioned for a part as an actor, got the part. So here he was playing a part on Buffy. I was just going to do the fight with him. But then I realized how vicious this one producer was toward the stunt guys acting. And I said, if he finds out you’re a stunt guy.

He’s going to treat you like crap. said, so don’t say anything about you’ve ever done stunts before. You’re a major thespian, man. That’s all you are. You are an actor. And you’re like, my God, I don’t do stunts. Are you kidding? Where’s my stunt double? And he said, OK, that’s you. OK? He said, got it. So I got a stunt double. So I had this guy who was a great stunt man sitting next to another great stunt man who had to double him so that the producer wouldn’t think that he had hired a stunt double.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (57:54.35)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (58:14.284)
I was stunt man to act. But later in the show, like the next season, we were talking about it and he said something about stunts and acting and all of this. And I said, I know this producer who did an episode of television. It was a great episode, you know, had the stunt man playing the guest starring role. And then he said, well, whoever that producer was, was an idiot. So I said, well, that producer was you, buddy.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (58:43.693)
You

Jeff Pruitt (58:43.982)
And I told him the episode and he just fumed and stormed off. Adventures in the Screen Tree.

Cal Macdonald (58:49.506)
Yeah, Elena, I’ll let you in with a final question before we go to the last segment.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (59:00.489)
well, okay, so final question. If we want to fight vampires, what is our workout schedule that you would recommend to start?

Jeff Pruitt (59:11.502)
Well, if you’re going to fight vampires as a stunt person, would say if you’re going to be like Buffy, you want to be like Buffy. Practice, practice fast combinations, distance, a lot of head snapping, a lot of timing, distance and backfalls, lot of backfalls. Sophia’s back is killing her today because of all of the backfalls she did. So if you’re going to do stunts,

Alena Bihan-Gallic (59:22.349)
Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (59:41.218)
Just know that your body is going to pay for it in the years ahead if you’re successful.

Cal Macdonald (59:48.738)
But it sounds like it’s a lot of fun. Yeah. But it sounds like it is a lot of fun while you’re doing it though.

Jeff Pruitt (59:50.156)
That’s I’m being honest with you.

Jeff Pruitt (59:56.438)
Stunts, I would just say this, stunts, it’s fun, it’s so much fun, but it’s the one job on a movie set where everyone goes to a movie set, they all have their jobs to do, but stunts is the one job where you don’t know if you’re going to be hurt that day or if you do get hurt, how bad it would be. It’s the one job where you’re going to get bruised up.

100%. You may think, well I’ll be careful, I’ll be this. Sooner or later, it’ll be something minor. It’ll be something, it won’t be the big stunt. It won’t be the big dangerous stunt that you think of. It’ll be small things, little things. But you’re gonna get hurt. So if you’re gonna be doing stunts, just know, it’s rough. It’s not an easy thing.

Cal Macdonald (01:00:33.76)
Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:00:43.906)
because quite famously, Jackie Chan’s worst injury was just simply jumping off a wall onto a tree and he fell down every branch of the way.

Jeff Pruitt (01:00:53.6)
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Yeah. And I remember when, when he broke his, his ankle, just hopping down onto a boat, they had a little gymnastic mat. He broke his ankle hopping off that. And then they still had a big finale and the director, was, you know, Stanley Tong, this was Rumble in the Bronx and, and Rumble in the Bronx, Jackie was supposed to jump from one building down to another and go,

Cal Macdonald (01:01:08.489)
yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:01:14.882)
Yeah, yeah, I know I will.

Jeff Pruitt (01:01:23.502)
across the building and land on the balcony and go through a door. And that’s actually Stanley Tong himself doing that, the director, because Stanley’s a stunt man. So Stanley had, because Jackie had broken his ankle and they’re trying to figure out how to do these stunts. And that’s one of the things we used to, when I worked with the Hong Kong guys, I worked with a lot of Jackie’s stunt doubles. And that was a guy that you had to pull back because he knew

He was the star and he realized, yes, every time I get hurt, then that puts the production on hold, right? Well, you can’t do that in Hollywood. In Hong Kong, where there’s no union, there was nothing. You could just put it on hold, come back two months later, that’s pick it up. But in Hollywood, my God, if an actor gets hurt that badly, like, you know, like Tom Cruise hurt his ankle. It wasn’t necessary. His stunt double did this jump many times. He didn’t have to have the bigs.

the big jump with Tom, but he wanted to do it, you know, and he’s also the boss. So, but that set the production back. cost a lot of money. That one little thing. It wasn’t necessary. Another time Brad Pitt was running across, I remember I was talking to the stunt coordinator. It was, what was the show, the movie with the, about the, you know, when he was saying, what’s in the box, what’s in the box? You know, that show, that movie.

Cal Macdonald (01:02:51.116)
Seven.

Jeff Pruitt (01:02:52.0)
Anyway, seven, yeah. So he was running, Brad Pitt, you notice he had a cast on his hand in that movie, right? That’s because he ran across some hoods of the cars and it was supposed to be in the rain and they had the cars and he slipped and his hand went through the windshield, right? And then they had to figure out how to write it into the script that he had a bandage on his hand. I…

I said to the stunt coordinator, why? Because it was just a shot of feet running away from camera. Why did you let him do that? And they said, because he’s the star and I had to let him do it. So I said, yeah, but that just shows you the kind of thing that can happen. On Buffy, had, we were talking about the one time an actress got hurt was when Cordelia in the prom, it was the prom episode.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:03:46.733)
and

Jeff Pruitt (01:03:47.174)
And we were fighting, I had Buffy fighting with these deer antlers, right? And also the guy she was fighting, that’s also the director of John Wick. That was Chad Stahelski, who was my first angel double. But I sent him to go do the Matrix. And when he went did the Matrix, he hooked up with Keanu and that started that whole thing. But so Sophia was fighting with Chad and she throws down the antlers. And then Cordelia,

and Buffy are supposed to run and jump out a window. And so Charisma, Charisma Carpenter wanted to run across the floor. And I said, no, I said, don’t because there’s so much junk on the floor. I said, it’s just a shot from behind. Just let Jennifer Badger was a stunt of us. It just lets Sophia and Jennifer Badger do it. She said, no, no, I want to run. I want to run. So the director, who was one of the producers, he said, Jeff, I’m going to put my foot down here. This is not a stunt. She’s just running. I said, yeah, but I don’t.

And he said, no, no, we got just let her do it. I don’t want to hear about it. Just let her do it. So she ran across the floor. She tripped on the antlers, hit her nose on the table and everybody thought her nose was broken because it was all split open. And then they took her took her away. And so I just looked at him and he said, okay, you’re right. You were right. it. And he said, yeah, man, we got to we got to

protect the actors at all costs even when they get mad at us, you know, they get they get mad at us because they kind of they feel like, you know, they’re missing out on the action. But I’m telling you, they don’t have to do that stuff. That’s what this let the stunt person do it because it’s not worth it. Now we’ve got to try to figure out how to write. We had to change the whole schedule so that we could shoot scenes without her face in it, you know, and it

Cal Macdonald (01:05:26.604)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:05:30.361)
That is.

Jeff Pruitt (01:05:43.466)
It costs a lot of money to do that. Not to mention it, it’s dangerous for the actor.

Cal Macdonald (01:05:49.666)
Okay, we’ve got one last viewer question. Gosha again, she’s asking, with CGI becoming so advanced, what do you think the future looks like for stunt performance? Do you see technology replacing the craft or just changing how you work?

Jeff Pruitt (01:06:05.942)
Yes, it is going to replace stunt people a lot. It’s already replaced a lot of car stunts, a lot of high falls, burns that we used to do. Like there’s an episode of Buffy where she’s dreaming about being married to Angel or something. And Buffy goes up in flames, right? So I did a full burn with Sophia. Then we did a burn on a mannequin. And then we did slightly a little bit of CG stuff and it mixed it all together. But today,

you would just do CG. You don’t have to have in danger anybody. There’s no elaborate fire prep or anything. And high falls, burns, and certain car stunts are already gone. They’ve tried to do it with fight scenes. Like in the first Wonder Woman, you’ll see part of her fight scene is actually, but it looks like when there’s Superman flying around, they’re kind of used to it.

But when you’re trying to do a martial arts fight, one-on-one fighting with someone, it looks like a video game too much. Right now, right now it does. But in the future, I predict in the future, it’ll be less and less work for stunt people because it’ll simply be AI or CG characters doing that same action. you’re able to control the bodies and make what you want out of it, then yeah.

Right now, the fighting stuff is too elaborate and it requires changing and everything, but eventually it’s going to get there. That’ll be the last thing to go.

Cal Macdonald (01:07:43.362)
I think that’s why the last Mad Max film was such a breath of fresh air. It had weight to it and you realised what you’d been missing all these years.

Jeff Pruitt (01:07:49.089)
Right.

Jeff Pruitt (01:07:54.306)
Well, I hear that from people every time people get used to seeing these movies that like a lot of the superhero movies that are just there’s so much CG. And then when they see a film where people are really doing real stunts, it’s like, wow, they jump because they can feel the difference. You know, it’s a feeling. But how how soon will it be that they’re able to you won’t be able to tell you won’t get that.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:08:11.641)
Bye.

Jeff Pruitt (01:08:22.86)
video game feeling, you’ll just get real life feeling. And it’s coming fast, you know, it’s coming fast.

Cal Macdonald (01:08:28.365)
Yeah. Okay, we’re gonna.

Jeff Pruitt (01:08:31.18)
i think i was there i was there during the good times that the good years you know that’s what i like to say

Cal Macdonald (01:08:34.464)
Yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll end on a good note. We always end with a bit of a quick fire round. Are you ready for some quick fire questions? So it’s just, we’ll ask and it’s first thing that comes into your head. So question number one, would you rather a bigger paycheck or a bigger explosion on a film?

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:08:35.225)
Thank

Jeff Pruitt (01:08:44.312)
Sure.

Jeff Pruitt (01:08:54.636)
Well, I don’t care how big the explosion is, so I would rather a big paycheck. the same, but I will say this, I would rather a bigger fight than a bigger paycheck. Put it that way. If I can do a more elaborate action scene, more elaborate fight, I like that better than the paycheck.

Cal Macdonald (01:09:04.342)
Okay.

Cal Macdonald (01:09:11.7)
Okay, so best movie fighter the last decade you didn’t work on?

Jeff Pruitt (01:09:17.998)
Oh man, you know what? Since I would say since 2016, I haven’t really paid attention. And even the, even the shows that I worked on in 2020, I never really, I’ve never seen them. You know, I just go in and it’s like, I lost my excitement over it. It’s like I’d done it for so long going to say, and I recently, you know, worked with some guys and I set up all of these elaborate wire gags and I’ve never even bothered to look at it.

because it’s like I’ve done it so much. It’s not the same as it was for me back then. So I have no idea what the, when I run into another stunt guy and they’re telling me about working on this show or that, or the actors, I have no idea what I go, man, I’ve never seen it. I just watch YouTube, you know? I don’t watch, I don’t care. I don’t care.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:06.05)
All right. All right.

So what would you rather have in your collection? A Power Rangers helmet or Buffy’s leather jacket?

Jeff Pruitt (01:10:19.586)
Well, we’ve got both in our collection. we’ve got the steak. Yeah. As a matter of fact, at our coffee shop, we have a Power Ranger helmet. We have all of the jackets from Buffy and Power Rangers and all of these shows. And we’ve got various, you know, pictures on the wall of behind the scenes of all of these shows. So, yeah. So we have those things. Buffy’s, Buffy, the leather pants that Buffy wore in the Buffy versus Faith fight. We’ve still got those. Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:21.044)
Alright.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:31.276)
Alright.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:40.642)
So.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:10:47.161)
Yeah. Wow.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:48.514)
Wow. So on the day of a big stunt, what do you drink? A coffee or a Red Bull?

Jeff Pruitt (01:10:56.182)
I’m sorry, couldn’t hear you.

Cal Macdonald (01:10:57.86)
sorry, on the day of a big stunt, what would you be drinking? A coffee or a Red Bull before you go?

Jeff Pruitt (01:11:04.366)
you’re breaking up, Kel. I can’t.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:11:05.465)
Now the question is if you’re doing a big stand would you drink coffee or Red Bull?

Jeff Pruitt (01:11:13.036)
You know, Sophia used to always have a Red Bull in her hand during the Buffy days. But I would only drink coffee and Cokes, so Coca-Cola. So that’s it. But I never drank. Although let me tell you something about Red Bull. If I can just do a quick plug. Those guys, you know, they have their stunt award, the Taurus award. When I got injured, I injured my back on a motorcycle crash and

I had all the insurance company was like holding off refusing to pay, but I had had all of this. So the medical bills were being sent to me and we were like going, calling the producers going, Hey, what’s happening? And I was in a bind. thought, wow, there’s $30,000 of bills here coming at me. And the people that Red Bull said, don’t worry, Jeff, we’ll take care of it. And they just gave me a check for 30, 30 grand and.

So then the insurance kicked in and so I had an extra 30 grand. And it’s like, they just gave it to me. They said, no, you got injured on the set and we’re backing you. We backed the stunt people. I went, wow, wow. So Red Bull, now I will drink a ton of Red Bull.

Cal Macdonald (01:12:20.45)
Okay.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:12:23.961)
You

Jeff Pruitt (01:12:26.188)
Before that, I didn’t drink Red Bull, but now once they did that for me, I won’t forget that. I will drink Red Bull now.

Cal Macdonald (01:12:32.546)
What’s the injury you remember the most vividly?

Jeff Pruitt (01:12:38.587)
of the injury that is what the most bothersome to me today or,

Cal Macdonald (01:12:44.128)
or the one you just remember the most that you rode injury doing stunt work, an injury you got.

Jeff Pruitt (01:12:49.89)
I would say the back injury because I fractured vertebrae in my back. That was a big mess. I was supposed to be doing a different stunt that day. I was going to do what we called a dead man, which is a wire attached to a harness and I fly off backwards. This was like A Mad Max type scene. And then at the last second, the director said,

let’s do a jump. Can you do, can you do a jump for me over camera? And I said, yeah, if we, if we had a ramp and he said, well, let me get the guys to build one. Would that be okay? And I said, okay, if they can do it, but let me test it first. So they built a ramp out of a, a tailgate of a truck. And I looked at it and I said, well, let me, I have to test it. Don’t, don’t dig the hole for the camera operator to get in. Cause I have to jump over camera.

said don’t dig the hole yet because I have to test it slow first. But then the motorcycle wouldn’t work because the guy had forgotten to bring a battery so I had to take it to my truck and get it jumped off. By the time I got the motorcycle running, it was this Mad Max looking thing with steel spikes sticking out of it. It was super fast but my God was it a death trap. So I came up and then they had dug the hole because the

the sun was moving and director wanted to get the shot with the sunrise, looking into the sunrise. So I had no choice. I said, God, I had to test this ramp to make sure it’s good. So now I’m gonna have to hit it full speed. And they said, just go, go, we gotta go. So I jumped and I did the jump and it was perfect. I flew over the camera, landed, kept going. And then the director said, the other guys were too slow. They were too far behind. They were chasing you, know. Do it one more time. And I said, yeah, but.

I felt the ramp move. I said, we got to check the ramp. He said, we don’t have time. We don’t have time. We’re rolling. We’re rolling. Go, go. And I was like, and I always told stunt guys, if something’s wrong, tell me and I will stop it. But I was looking around, there were no other stunt people. It was just me and the whole crew was looking at me. And this was what many, many stunt people have gotten hurt doing this. I’ve seen it happen on other shows and commercials. I saw it in Ireland. happened one time where they pressured a girl to jump off.

Jeff Pruitt (01:15:07.594)
a helicopter to hit an airbag and she knew the wind was blowing and she missed the airbag, you know. So with me, they were going, just go Jeff, just go. The sun is moving. We got to shoot. We’re rolling. Rolling. So I had to go and I went full speed and I hit it. And as soon as I hit it, the ramp broke and stuck on the motorcycle. And so the motorcycle just stopped and I banged it to it, went over and roll and it broke my back and my collarbone and all of the stuff.

So that was the worst injury because I went to the hospital, then they told me that I needed to go to the hospital. And I said, what? And they said, well, you’ve got a broken back, broken collarbone. You need to see an orthopedic surgeon. But we don’t have anyone. So you need to go. And I said, okay. So they took me back to the set out in the desert and I had to wait 10 hours to come back home. And then when I got home, I still couldn’t see a doctor.

And so for one week I laid in bed taking pain pills from my neighbor next door while Sophia fought on the phone with the producers saying, hey, we got to go see a doctor. There was something wrong with their insurance. What had happened, and this is something that happens to stunt people. They did not, the production did not factor in for stunts on the insurance. In order to be cheap and save money, they said there were no stunts. That’s what I think happened.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:16:32.333)
and

Jeff Pruitt (01:16:35.446)
And in reality, we’re doing all of these elaborate stunts. So when the ramp broke and me, the insurance company was trying not to pay and they were, so they were going back and forth. So finally I did get help and I did get insurance and I did get through it, but that was the thing that Red Bull kicked in and helped me out with that. But I was laying there in bed with a broken back for a week and a man that was so I’ll never forget that. That I will never forget. It was a painful.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:17:01.753)
you

Cal Macdonald (01:17:03.712)
Okay. ouch. All right. Next question, your favorite prop weapon, a sword, a gun or your fists?

Jeff Pruitt (01:17:05.176)
painful thing. And I still feel it to this day, you you have to be careful.

Jeff Pruitt (01:17:19.286)
Okay, you broke up, Cal. Can you tell me, Elena, what was the question?

Cal Macdonald (01:17:21.474)
Your favourite prop weapon? A sword, a gun or your fists?

Jeff Pruitt (01:17:31.182)
Well, I, it’s always fun with a gun. It is fun. But, I don’t know. I would say a fist because we, we enjoy doing fight scenes, as far as props, the gun, but I always have to say the steak because of my wife, you know.

Cal Macdonald (01:17:55.539)
hahahaha

Yeah.

Jeff Pruitt (01:17:59.682)
She because if I I say if I say she’ll say why didn’t you say steak the steak? It’s a we just call mr. Pointy So we have we have mr. Pointy on the wall at the coffee shop and she said you should have said mr. Pointy So mr. Pointy, okay, that’s the in case any Buffy fans. They know mr. Pointy is the name of the steak

Cal Macdonald (01:18:04.706)
Yeah, all right. wow.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:18:20.067)
Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:18:20.098)
Okay. What is the one thing you wish actors would stop trying to do themselves?

Jeff Pruitt (01:18:29.164)
would stop trying to do?

Cal Macdonald (01:18:31.577)
Yeah, if there’s one thing you could say to actors, no, just can’t, if there was a blanket rule you could make for actors to stop trying to do that.

Jeff Pruitt (01:18:33.15)
Jeff Pruitt (01:18:40.76)
Hmm. I don’t know. mean, my experience with the actors is they’re they’re pretty gung-ho and and easy going. I guess the only thing as far as actors go and this is this happened on Buffy. This happened to me on a show with with Dolph Lundgren and and with other guys. It’s it’s this thing where if they become jealous of the stunt double, which happened with Sophia and

and Sarah, unfortunately, but it’s just this thing where, look, we’re making you look good. It doesn’t matter if like on Buffy, the crew was ordered not to clap for Sophia anymore because it upset Sarah. So it’s like, I would be the only guy standing there going, good job, baby, good job. I did that for everybody. But I just think there’s something about actors and it’s like Tom Cruise, his stunt double got fired because we were going to give him an award for

for this motorcycle stunt, but Tom had said he did all of those stunts himself. So since Tom is going on the Tonight Show and saying, I do it all, I do everything. And then we’re giving an award to his stunt double for doing that stunt. Then that jealousy thing, I wish that would go away. Just because in the early, early days of making films, actors weren’t so the way they are now, they’re so…

It’s all about me, me, me, me. And it has to be about me. No, I did that. I wrote the script. I directed it. I made it better. Everything I did, you know, it’s get off that man. Just just be good at acting. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Forget about trying to tell everybody you do all your own stunts or you do most of the fighting or you just do what you can do and and then give credit to the to the people who actually make you look good. Give them the credit, you know.

Cal Macdonald (01:20:39.138)
Okay, and last question, I think you kind of answered this in the pre-show chat we had. If you weren’t a stunt coordinator, what would you be?

Jeff Pruitt (01:20:39.436)
We all contribute, you know?

Jeff Pruitt (01:20:51.71)
I almost became a cop. did. I, I, I took the test. went through the, training and stuff and, and then, I wound up having a chance to go to Los Angeles. Like it was in between Georgia and Los Angeles. I went to California and I, and I started, working with some guys and they were becoming, they were going out for the, CHP.

Cal Macdonald (01:20:54.123)
All right.

Jeff Pruitt (01:21:19.552)
So they brought me along and then I, I, and I enjoyed it. And I, and I, they asked me to, to continue and, and, and go to the academy. And then just before I went, I said, I thought to myself, you know, I had this goal of, of doing this in, in stunts. I wanted to make this certain type of action scene. And I said, if I just, if I go and become a cop, I’ll have a, I’ll have a good career, but I’m always going to wonder, I wish I had done that, you know? So.

Instead I said, okay, I’m gonna step away and I’m gonna go back and do the stunt So I did and it turned out pretty good So I got I got to do what I wanted, you know A lot of people a lot of people don’t get to do what they really want, you know, and and I did so I’m happy about that

Cal Macdonald (01:21:58.498)
Okay.

Cal Macdonald (01:22:06.614)
Yeah. And you got to your wife as well. What more could you want?

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:10.572)
Yep, that’s right. Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:22:14.018)
Okay, uh and well jeff, you very much for your time and there’s a lot of noise coming from somewhere. I don’t know where I don’t know. Oh, this is i’m getting a buzzing noise from I think it’s alena. I think you’re We’re getting noise from you

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:19.49)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:26.444)
Yeah.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:22:30.206)
OK. I don’t hear anything here.

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:31.054)
Well.

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:34.754)
Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to seeing the interview.

Cal Macdonald (01:22:38.338)
All right, yeah, that’s it. That’s it better. I don’t know what that was. I don’t know if it was a computer fan kicking in or something. But anyway, again, big thank you to Jeff. If people want to reach out, if they’ve got questions or they want to see more of your stuff, you mentioned a YouTube channel, where can they find you?

Jeff Pruitt (01:22:55.756)
Yeah, you can go to my YouTube channel where I’ve thrown up all of these Buffy behind the scenes things or you can just email me. JeffPruittStunts at gmail.com.

Cal Macdonald (01:23:08.182)
Yeah. Okay. And thank you to my co-host, Alaina. It’s been great to have you again. And thank you everyone for watching and when you get to listen to this. And we’ll look forward to the next episode, which is strangely enough, retrospective of Buffy continues. looking at season two and you’ve got a fresh look at this now, Alaina, to take it to the next episode. So thank you very much everyone for tuning in. Good night and we’ll…

Jeff Pruitt (01:23:12.856)
Thank you. Nice to meet you, Elena.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:23:34.754)
Yeah.

Cal Macdonald (01:23:37.843)
See you all very soon.

Jeff Pruitt (01:23:40.142)
Thank you. Bye bye.

Alena Bihan-Gallic (01:23:41.144)
Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Bye.

Cal Macdonald (01:23:43.075)
It just wants to.

Jeff Pruitt (01:23:48.992)
Okay. Okay.