When I was two, mom and dad bought me a trampoline for my birthday. I was learning to do back flips at five, just my dad going, “One, two, three,” and throwing me in the air and hoping I landed on my feet. I started doing recreational gym from when I was about nine. And then at 15 I got too tall and it was just time to stop. But I would still train with my gym coach because I was fidgety and bored.  My gym coach would use me in his training. “Zoe, come and demonstrate this.  Zoe, can you show him this?  Zoe, can you…”  And I was happy to do anything as long as I was playing.  One day this guy that came in and wanted to learn how to flip and do stuff.  His name was Pete Bell. It turned out that he was the coordinator of Xena and Hercules. I didn’t know what that meant and I didn’t really give a sh*t at the time. But when I gave up gymnastics, I would stay behind and watch the black belts train. It turned out that a bunch of them were also stunt guys. I was like, “Wait a minute. Do you get paid to do gymnastics and martial arts?  What the f*ck.” Then I guess I started talking about it at home.

My dad was working in an emergency clinic, and one day a guy came in with a bump on his head and dad was like, “How did you do it?” The guy, Ryan Carey, who is now one of my best friends, said he was a stunt man. Dad gave him a couple of Tylenol and was like, “Tell me about the stunt thing. My daughter’s been talking about it.” And if there’s one thing you realize when you’re a stunt person, everybody’s always wanted to be a stunt person. Everybody’s always got a daughter who would be good at it.  Everyone’s always got a brother that would be good at it. Everyone’s like, “Oh, I’ve been jumping off buildings since I was a kid”. That doesn’t necessarily make you a good stunt person. That makes you a crazy person. So Ryan was like, “Whatever.” Gave him his phone number. Dad came home with the phone number and basically was like “Listen, you’ve been talking about this a whole lot. It’s a really important opportunity. I think you should go outside and not allowed to come in until you’ve made this phone call.”

And that’s sort of how it happened.

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