How Do You Train Actors to Be Wrestlers? For ‘Heels,’ the Answer Is Real Pain

Editor’s note: The below interview took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike that began on July 14, 2023.

The Juilliard curriculum contains exactly zero classes on professional wrestling. That makes casting a show like “Heels” — the critically acclaimed Starz drama about two rival wrestlers and brothers who try to bring their late father’s Duffy Wrestling League to national attention — a particular challenge. You can act, but can you wrestle?

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Enter Luke Hawx, pro wrestler, wrestling promoter, stuntman, and operator of the WildKat wrestling league. He takes the actors to wrestling school. And how you teach actors to wrestle is, you hurt them.

Like “Heels,” professional wrestling is scripted — but don’t ever call it fake. Yes, the storylines are scripted and the matches’ endings are predetermined. But as far as your body is concerned, everything that happens inside the ropes is very real. Hell, just running into the thick ropes (which can be actual elevator cables) hurts like hell.

“I’ve never done a show that’s so painful,” said “Heels” star Alexander Ludwig. It’s worth noting that he’s best known as the star of the brutal History Channel drama “Vikings,” a series in which he actually had to hoist a ship over a cliff.

“It’s always the thing you don’t expect,” he said. “The big moves, those aren’t the ones that hurt. It’s the smaller ones… it’s like, ‘Fuck man, this shit sucks.'”

At 6’3″, 220 lbs., Ludwig is a big boy. But even his impressive build is not built to withstand the rigors of a sport that Hawx describes as “putting yourself through car wrecks over and over and over again.” Hawx’s job is to make this shit suck a bit less, but never at the cost of authenticity to the art form — wrestling, not acting.

Meddling in the push and pull between safety and legitimacy is the strict schedule that accompanies television production. No show can afford to shut down for weeks while an actor nurses an injury. That concern reared its head early when fellow “Heels” star Stephen Amell suffered a compound fracture in his back while filming the first season.

Sources close to production told IndieWire that the injury didn’t close the shoot, but “everyone got super worried,” Ludwig said. That included the company insuring “Heels.”

The compromise? Ludwig and Amell now do what Hawx estimated as “99 percent” of their own stunts.

“There are certain instances where insurance and the network will step up and say, like [for Ace] coming down on the zip line, does [Ludwig] need to fall and drop 10 feet from the zip line and risk twisting his ankle?” Hawx said.

The answer was no, so Ludwig tagged in his stuntman, Brady Pierce. (Pierce — as Ace — also jumps off the top of a 20-foot cage for Ludwig in Season 1.)

Pierce and the rest of the stunt team are from Hawx’s WildKat stable. Luke’s own son, PJ Hawx, plays the referee in “Heels.” You may know PJ from jumping off a second-story mall balcony for during a match, a clip that went viral.

There are no stunt doubles in shopping malls.

Ludwig and Hawx revere Pierce, but neither wants to see him in a shot.

“It’s so funny the ones insurance let you do and don’t let you do,” Ludwig said. “A zip line seems too dangerous but we can do the wrestling in the ring. That’s hysterical to me.”

But someone’s gotta be the adult in the room, and it’s the guy who booked his kid to jump from Nordstrom to Bath & Body Works.

“The risk for breaking a leg on something like [a zip line] is not worth the reward,” Hawx said. “Suplexing somebody [aka lifting opponents over your head, slamming both of you on your backs] off the top rope or giving somebody a DDT or a bodyslam — you see what they do, they’re working with each other, they’re protecting each other, but they’re still hurting each other because it’s impact and you cannot fake that.”

According to Hawx, the actors don’t. “These guys, they just went in and went balls to the wall, nonstop — guys and girls.” He’d love his wrestling students at Wildkat Sports to have the same dedication.

“I wish more students came in with the attitudes and determination that the actors came in with,” Hawx said. Amateurs “often quit within their first week. None of our actors ever, ever, EVER, said ‘I’m not doing this anymore, I’m walking out.'”

Must be tempting at times, though. Actors are used to learning fight sequences like a dance, one move at a time, and you don’t actually get struck. That doesn’t work for professional wrestling, Ludwig said. You can choreograph working punches and kicks (the industry term for pulled or fake strikes), but a bodyslam is a bodyslam.

A wrestling match doesn’t stop for the bumps and neither does a “Heels” taping. That’s by design and by choice.

“The worst thing you can do is just cut the scene because something didn’t go right. Then you did all this work for nothing,” Ludwig said. “So if you get hurt or you take an impact — you don’t stop, ever. You just never stop.”

Just like real pro wrestling.

“Heels” Season 2 premieres Friday at 10 p.m. ET on Starz.

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