The Fast and Furious franchise is famous for its high-octane car chases and spectacular crashes, but are all of those wild stunts really as dangerous as they look? Absolutely. Stunt driver and coordinator Robert Nagle, who has worked on every installment in the Fast and Furious series since Fast Five, and recently oversaw the thrilling racing scenes in James Mangold's Oscar-nominated film Ford v Ferrari, spoke with Looper in an exclusive interview about his career. Before he became a stunt driver, he worked as a racer — though he switched careers when money became too big of a factor. Nagle explained,
"Going down the back straightaway at 180 miles an hour and you're trying to think about where the next check is coming from... it just takes away from the passion of the sport."
This is why Nagle tends not to worry about whether or not he and his fellow drivers are up to the task.,
"A lot of the guys I hire have a pretty solid race background, because I know I can put them in any car. "
Still, sometimes even the best drivers can lose control. Ford v Ferrari's most spectacular car crash, which occurs as Christian Bale's Ken Miles completes his very first lap at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, was based on a real-life event. Before working on Ford v Ferrari, the film's second unit director, Darrin Prescott, was participating in a celebrity race when another car fell apart right in front of him. ,
"It was a right-hand corner and the car went a little bit wide and dropped the outside wheels into the grass, and that turned the car sideways and shot it back across the track and it hit a concrete wall. [Prescott] was pretty certain he just saw somebody die."
Luckily, Prescott was wrong, and the other driver was fine.
When it came time to film Ford v Ferrari, Nagle and Prescott decided to recreate that crash in the movie. However, the final scene isn't there just for thrills, but to show how dangerous Le Mans is. After all, the wreck comes during the first four minutes of Miles' race, when he still has 24 hours to go.
On set though, the real danger often comes from factors outside of the stunt team's control. When asked to identify his most dangerous stunt on the Fast and Furious films, Nagle explained that almost everything is inherently unsafe, saying,
"There's so much going on with some of these… [There are] multiple cars... and explosions, pyrotechnics going off around us. There's a whole lot going on and a whole lot that can go wrong very quickly." Keep watching the video to see the most dangerous Fast and the Furious stunt revealed!
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