‘Game Of Thrones’ stuntwoman’s career-ending fall leads to huge settlement, shows how stunt community “brush injuries under the carpet”

A former stuntwoman has opened up about her experience on the set of Game Of Thrones, and what it says about wider issues in the stunt industry.

Casey Michaels, who worked as a stunt performer on Game Of Thrones between 2016 and 2019, has spoken to Deadline about the injury that ended her career sustained while shooting the final season of the hit HBO fantasy show.

During a battle sequence in ‘The Long Night’ the third episode of season eight, Michaels was playing one of the White Walker’s army of the dead. The scene was shot during a rainy winter night in Belfast, where visibility was poor.

Michaels and many other stunt performers were asked to drop approximately 12 feet into a landing rig of boxes and crash mats – but on the second take, she landed with all her weight on her left ankle, shattering it completely. “I hit the floor and heard my bones breaking underneath me,” she said.

Michaels sued a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery, the studio behind the show, for £4million in 2021, with the claim that the injury had ended what would have been a promising career. Deadline has revealed that HBO paid out £7million, including legal costs, as part of a settlement in 2023, with the company’s lawyers apologising.

The incident happened under the watch of stunt co-ordinator Rowley Irlam. Michaels claims that they did not rehearse the scene, and that she had initially expected it to involve only 10 performers, when in reality it was a total of 27. She also claims that Irlam told her and the other performers not to spot their landing, and to “drop like a pencil”. Irlam denies the latter, and any responsibility for the accident, despite HBO admitting liability when settling.

In court, HBO initially claimed that Michaels’ “own negligence” was the reason for the incident. Michaels is a third-generation stunt performer, and her father Wayne, whose work includes doubling for Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, said that was an “appalling attempt to publicly humiliate and punish” his daughter.

Several experts, including Mission: Impossible’s Wade Eastwood, were engaged to write a report on the incident. Most agreed that the landing rig used on the stunt was unsuitable, and wasn’t sufficient for the number of performers involved.

Michaels and her family are speaking out about their case in protest of the lack of an industry-recognised professional stunt body in the UK, which means the competency of stunt co-ordinators like Irlam is not subject to independent scrutiny. There is an existing organisation, the British Stunt Register (BSR), but it doesn’t have the ability to investigate members or accidents.

According to Deadline, Michaels, who also appeared in films including 2019’s Dumbo and Fighting With My Family, was on crutches for nearly a year after the accident, had five operations, was treated for PTSD, and continues to deal with chronic pain.

She said: “I can forgive accidents. I can forgive mistakes. I cannot forgive lies.

“Two people went to hospital, and they [the Game of Thrones stunt coordinators] are still denying that they did anything wrong. Their egos are so great that they cannot put their hands up and say: ‘We understand this was wrong. We will correct this, we will do better, we will learn from our mistakes.”

An HBO spokeswoman said: “We are saddened to learn about the adversity Ms Michaels has experienced and take these matters very seriously. Mr Irlam is a celebrated and respected stunt coordinator and has an extensive history with HBO productions. As an expert in such a physically demanding field, we remain confident in his abilities and know he has always done everything possible to maintain the high safety standards that are required on our productions.”

This story comes after the Oscars announced a new award category for stunt design, which will make its debut at the 2028 ceremony.

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