Citadel’s stunt master Don Theerathada: We were lucky to have Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra, because they were game!

Still from the series `Citadel`

The Priyanka Chopra and Richard Madden-starrer 'Citadel' has been making waves as the series races towards its finale on May 26. With the high octane action-laden sequences being the selling point of the series, stunt coordinator Don Theerathada explains the process behind the making.

He said, "[Showrunner] David Weil mentioned that he envisioned the action to be like No Country for Old Men - gritty and visceral - so we took that and went with it. But honestly, the biggest inspirations are dependent on the actors' performances. It doesn't matter what vision you have unless the actors can execute them. You have to see what they can do, and what they possibly can do. The minute you have them doing something that feels alien to them, it becomes forced, fake, and awkward, which is a big fail.

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He further adds, "We were lucky to have Richard and Priyanka, because they were game, worked really hard, and had natural talent giving them the ability to learn, move, and make these techniques look natural and not foreign to them."

Don shares, "For 'Citadel' we had to figure out ways of "cheating" setups. For instance, in the skiing scenes, we needed some close-up shots of Richard, which are difficult to do when actual skiing. So I had to figure out a rig to make it look like he was skiing on stage. I previously worked on 'Aquaman', where we used a lot of these rigs to make everyone look like they were floating underwater. So I took that concept and used what we call a tuning fork and puppeteer-ed him so it gave him the floating motions of slaloming down a hill, allowing to get the focused close-up shot of him skiing."

Also read: 'Blood, sweat and tears, literally': Priyanka Chopra talks about 'Citadel' stunt sequences

Talking about the expanse of stunts, Priyanka Chopra Jonas shared, "I think Anthony and Joe brought the most incredible stunt team onto the show. [Anthony and Joe Russo] have worked with the best in the business. And we were really lucky to be able to work with people like that. Our stunt team was incredible. I really think Nadia's character's a badass, and she comes from a place of trusting her body and her instincts. And I got to explore a lot of that with the stunts that we did. Every time I would read new pages, the stunts would just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it was amazing to be able to imagine that and then walk in the set and actually execute it. It was great."