During his interview with Empire, Jeff Bridges not only credited Jonathan E. Steinberg for his writing on the action scenes for “The Old Man” but also stunt coordinators Timothy Connolly and stunt double Tommy DuPont. Bridges has worked with the latter on other films such as “Seventh Son,” but the duo has years of experience working in the business. For Bridges, their knowledge was key to making the action sequences in “The Old Man” work as well as they did, especially to give it that single-take style.
“And we have these stunt experts, Timothy Connolly and Tommy DuPont, the guy I’ve worked with a lot in movies,” Bridges said. “I asked him, ‘What’s the state of the art [with] fight scenes? Because I’m not aware of that.’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t want to be immodest, but it’s a show that I worked on.’ I said, ‘What was that?’ And he said ‘Atomic Blonde.’ That fight scene on the stairs, what they can do now, making it all feel like one take… I said, ‘Oh, well I’m in good hands.'”
Stunt performers and coordinators are often the unsung heroes of any production, especially in the action genre, so Bridges’ praise of DuPont and Connolly is admirable. In fact, it’s definitely hard to imagine that shows like “The Old Man” would work at all without their and other stunt workers’ invaluable contributions.