Daniel Radcliffe is telling the tale of the person who taught him how to fly when he was portraying Harry Potter.
Wednesday saw the premiere of the trailer for the upcoming documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived, which will be shown on HBO. The film will be about David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt guy in the Harry Potter films.
When Holmes was a teenager, he started working as a stunt performer on the Harry Potter movies. It was around this time that he first met Radcliffe, who is now 34 years old. Holmes was involved in the production of all eight Harry Potter movies, but he was rendered immobile after an accident that occurred on the set of the film De.athly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010.
In the first few seconds of the video, we see Holmes, who has been confined to a wheelchair ever since the accident, reflecting on his time spent working in the stunt industry. His abilities as a gymnast are shown in archival video, as are his and other stunt artists’ interactions with the actors and staff of the Harry Potter films. A number of clips from the years that followed demonstrate how the event impacted Holmes.
“This terrible thing happened to Dave, but I don’t want to talk as if his life is a tragedy,” Radcliffe says in the teaser. “I don’t want to talk as if his life is a tragedy.” Because of the way his life has impacted the lives of the people around him, we can safely say that it is the farthest thing possible from that.
During the preview, Holmes refers to his role as Radcliffe’s primary stunt double as “the best job in the world,” and Radcliffe adds that Holmes “seemed like a cool older brother” when they were filming the scenes together.
“As Daniel and [David’s] closest stunt colleagues rally to support David and his family in their moment of need, it is David’s extraordinary spirit of resilience that becomes their greatest source of strength and inspiration,” according to a summary of the documentary.
According to the summary, the documentary incorporates “candid personal footage shot over the last decade, behind-the-scenes material from Holmes’ stunt work, scenes of his current life and intimate interviews with David, Daniel Radcliffe, friends, family and former crew” to relate his tale. Additionally, the film also includes clips from his current life.
Several of the actors who play Harry Potter are seen in still images throughout the teaser. In one picture, Daniel Radcliffe and Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes can be seen smiling with Tom Felton, James and Oliver Phelps, Matthew Lewis, Bonnie Wright, and Rupert Grint. Holmes is quoted as saying that he was “able to find the light in the darkest of places” after his injuries in the previous picture.
The documentary, whose name is derived from one of the many aliases that have been bestowed upon Harry Potter throughout the course of the series, has Radcliffe and Holmes in the role of executive producers. Dan Hartley, a filmmaker who was a member of the production team for each of the Harry Potter movies, helmed this picture as its director.
The first episode of David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived will air on HBO on November 15 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time (ET), and it will be available to watch on Max.