Hollywood Horses

From Wonder Woman to Game of Thrones, the Naprous family works with the equine stars of big-name television shows and movies to create the magic you see onscreen.

By ANN GLAVAN

Asingle horse and rider gallop headlong toward enemy lines. In slow motion, you appreciate the bounding stride of the horse, the rider’s expression strained in a battle cry.

Or perhaps it’s a carriage chase, steel shoes clattering on a sodden cobbled street late at night, a villain in pursuit and rapidly gaining ground.

Or is it a quiet moment, a boy and his horse in the early morning light, sun streaming through the stall slats, catching dust and glinting o a shiny rump, as the boy pulls the horse’s head to his chest? ese are the moments horse lovers remember from movies—the drama, the action and the heart—and they’re all brought to life by the Naprous family. For more than 30 years, Gerard Naprous and his children Dan and Camilla have owned and operated e Devil’s Horsemen, a stable in Buckinghamshire, England, that provides horses and stunt teams and teaches actors to ride.

Two generations of horsemen have bred, bought and trained the horses that have played alongside some of the biggest stars in the business—with some becoming stars themselves in the process. Gerard worked on a lm adaptation of Anna Sewell’s classic book Black Beauty. Dan helped bring Joey, the bay colt who charged fearlessly into battle in War Horse, to life. Camilla currently works as horsemaster at the hit HBO drama Game of rones.

And it all started with a carthorse in the French countryside.

IMAGE COURTESY OF HBO

Game of Thrones horsemaster Camilla

Naprous helped execute a popular—and Emmy Awardwinning—episode with the “Battle of the Bastards,” which starred actor Kit Harington as Jon Snow.

“You never really know what a horse wants to do. You’ve got a pretty good idea, but we try and give the horses opportunities to do different things,” says Dan Naprous of training horses for popular movies and shows like HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Gerard Naprous got his start with horses as a child in France, and now, at 69, he’s still involved.

FILM BECOMES A FAMILY BUSINESS

Gerard was born shortly after World War II in a rural area outside Paris. His parents weren’t riders; they operated an auto repair shop.

“As a kid I liked animals, and I liked horses, and there from an early age I would go to ride the carthorses,” Gerard says, his French accent still strong despite living in England for the past 40 years.

Gerard received more formal equine education in his teen years, going to riding school in France where he learned show jumping and dressage in the classical style thanks to a Polish ex-cavalry instructor.

“ en, at the age of 18, a friend of mine said, ‘Oh, I know someone who works in the lm industry,’ ” Gerard says. “And I said, ‘Oh, that would be nice,’ and I meet this gentleman, this French gentleman, who came from Czechoslovakia.” e man gave Gerard his rst break in the business.

“He had a stable outside Paris with acting horses and driving horses, and there I started in the lm industry,” Gerard says. “Of course, starting as a groom.”

Along with the usual barn tasks, Gerard was responsible for riding and exercising the horses in his care. He began to learn the ins and outs of the movie business, meeting the various horsemen involved.

Gerard traveled to England for work frequently, and in the early 1970s he decided to stay in the country and strike out on his own in the lm business.

“I came with nothing, and I bought two horses in England in 1973,” he says. “My rst horse was named Snoopy. I bought her and trained her to do the trick

When Dan Naprous isn’t working on the set of films, television shows and commercial productions, he can be found competing with his team in combined driving, a sport he’s been involved with at the international level since 2012.

riding, the rearing, the lying down, falling, and then I did live shows.”

Gerard drummed up business with his live performances and through contacts he made grooming. He started getting small parts in lms with his horses.

“I bought a lovely stallion, a palomino stallion, a bit like Roy Rogers,” Gerard says with a laugh. “And so you grow and grow, and then I had like 10 horses around me, and then Willow, that was a very big movie. I bought more horses for Willow to do the chariot race.”

Willow was the movie that started Gerard’s business in earnest—his “big break,” as he says. Released in 1988, the fantasy lm was written and produced by George Lucas, directed by Ron Howard and starred Val Kilmer. e money Gerard made from it allowed him to continue growing the business. Along with providing the horses for the lm, Gerard bought the carriage and chariot equipment needed.

In 1979 Gerard’s son, Daniel, was born. Camilla followed eight years later. Dan and Camilla grew up riding with Gerard and their respective mothers, Tina Bernstein and Sally Anne Oultram, both of whom Gerard met through the horse business.

Dan and Camilla learned trick riding as children, and they started working on lms as teens. Dan’s rst movie was the 1989 version of A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court.

“I was doubling as a girl in it,” he says and chuckles. “I don’t think I would get away with that now.”

Camilla, now 30, did her rst live show at 8.

“It’s kind of crazy,” she says. “I don’t think anyone lets kids do this anymore, but I stood on my two little ponies—

it’s called Roman riding—and galloped around the arena. at was my rst performance, and to be honest I haven’t stopped since.”

Formal school didn’t hold much interest for the Naprous children, and Camilla dropped out at 14.

“My father said, ‘Do you want to go to Luxembourg to work on a movie? If you’re not going to go to school, you have to go to work.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, hard labor, 20hour days, fantastic. Let’s go!’ ” Camilla says with a laugh.

As for Dan, he stayed in school until he was 15.

“I always knew I would be in this business,” he says. “I wasn’t really intelligent enough to do anything else. As a kid, I think I wanted to do this or [be] a ghter pilot.”

AND ACTION!

ese days, the Naprous family’s Wychwood Stud is home to more than 100 horses, thousands of di erent saddles and bridles, and around 150 di erent carriages.

If it sounds like a lot, consider that along with providing horses and equipment for movies—Dan, Camilla and Gerard can each work separately on di erent sets at the same time—Wychwood also hosts live stunt riding shows nearly every weekend. Chariot races, Wild West performances, Cossack trick riding, jousting, the Naprouses do it all.

Some of the horses they breed themselves, but most are bought as 3- and 4-year-olds.

“We have a lot of Andalusians, Lusitanos, Friesians, and a lot of Hungarian horses at the moment for driving,” Camilla says. “But most of the actors ride Andalusians and Lusitanos. ey have that movement that looks good on camera.” e young horses begin their journeys to movie stardom with basic dressage work. It’s on that foundation the “tricks” can be taught—lying down, rearing, falling over. And of course, none of those tricks are any good if the horses can’t perform them in strange places—like on a

Camilla Naprous has been performing Roman riding since she was 8.

lm set. at’s where the live show comes in.

“[ e live shows are] super education for them,” Dan says. “If they can cope with 8,000 people cheering and getting excited and ags waving and everything, a lm set isn’t really exciting for them. ey’re already used to that.” e sheer number of horses works in their favor as well when it comes to training. “Some horses you can turn around in six months, and they can be on set. Others take a couple of years,” Camilla says. “It depends on the horse itself and how good it is in the head.”

But the human trainers aren’t the only ones getting the horses ready.

“If you watch the younger horses, they learn a lot from the older horses. ey are herd animals at the end of the day,” Camilla explains.

“If you have a group of 10 horses, and you put one youngster in, it’s amazing how quickly it becomes relaxed in the atmosphere because the others are relaxed and quiet,” Dan adds.

Once they’ve introduced a horse to the set atmosphere, the process becomes remarkably like that of an up-and-coming human actor.

“ ey start in the background, and as they do more they come closer to the front,” Dan says. “And some get there very fast, and some take [a] whole lifetime to get there.” ere are also di erent roles horses can play in the movie business. You need well-broke schoolmasters for actors with no experience, athletic mounts for stunt doubles to ride in action scenes, and horses that work at liberty for riderless scenes.

“We have a famous saying in England: ‘Horses for courses,’ ” Dan says. “You never really know what a horse wants to do. You’ve got a pretty good idea, but we try and give the horses opportunities to do di erent things. We try and nd what alley suits them the best, which sort of direction to take, and it’s a long process.”

Once the horses know their jobs, a member of the Naprous family will meet with a lm’s director to ascertain the exact nature of the action.

“Occasionally they’ll come up with something we’ve never done before, and then we have to train them up,” says Camilla. “We say, ‘OK, let’s see if we can try that,’ and we’ll go through the process and try to choreograph what the director wants.

“If it is impossible or dangerous, then [computergenerated imagery] will do it,” she continues. “For example, they did a scene on War Horse where the horse jumps over a tank. So they lmed the horse jumping up onto the tank, and then CGI takes over the rest where it leaps completely over, because obviously a horse couldn’t do that.”

To make complicated scenes more manageable, they may use multiple animals to play one horse character. For example, when Gerard worked on Black Beauty, ve horses played the title role, and when Dan did War Horse, they used 14 horses to play the lead, Joey.

“Horses are a little bit like the human actors; they’ve only got so many looks they can do in each performance,” Dan says. “You’ve got to have di erent horses to give you all the looks.”

If a director needs a very speci c color or marking on a horse that none of the animals have naturally, Gerard says they’ll dye coats. is also works to match all the horses playing one character.

All the training and preparation then comes together on set. One scene Camilla is particularly proud of is the horseback ght between two armies in the sixth season of Game of rones, in an episode known as the “Battle of the Bastards.”

In the battle scene, character Jon Snow, played by actor Kit Harington, gallops across a eld toward a line of soldiers on horseback. Arrows strike his horse, and it pitches forward, sending Snow somersaulting over its ears.

“He did all the riding in that sequence except the fall,” Camilla says. e fall wasn’t done with CGI though—the horse does fall forward, throwing the stunt rider o .

“ ey’re all trained up to do that,” Camilla says. e horses are also trained to fall in di erent ways depending on the e ect the director wants.

I DON’T THINK ANYONE LETS KIDS DO THIS ANYMORE, BUT I STOOD ON MY TWO LITTLE PONIES—IT’S CALLED ROMAN RIDING—AND GALLOPED AROUND THE ARENA.”

–CAMILLA NAPROUS

“For example, when you see Jon Snow fall over in the battle, that’s from a cue from someone on the ground behind the horse,” she says. “ ere is a guy running behind, which we CGI out.” e stunt doubles can also tell the horse to fall over on his side from cues given on his back.

“If you watch the movies, you see them start to pull [the horse’s] head around,” Camilla explains.

After Snow falls o his horse, an army of soldiers on horseback come galloping at him, a lone gure in the eld. Snow pulls out his sword, and just as it seems he is about to meet his doom, his army catches up to him. e horses collide with horses from the other side, as the battle breaks out.

How does Camilla pull o such a convincing amount of carnage and mayhem without putting horses or riders in danger?

“It’s cleverly done with camera angles,” she says. “So for example, let’s say I have 20 horses and 20 more horses coming through [at each other], we’ll leave like a two-foot gap in between, so the horses will look like they’re colliding.”

As far as the shots of horses getting impaled or otherwise maimed, that’s where CGI takes over. Animators also add more commotion in the background of scenes to make it seem like thousands of horses are battling when it’s only about 80.

“I would say it’s 70 percent real, 30 percent CGI in the ‘Battle of the Bastards,’ ” Camilla says. ough no one is playing bumper cars on horseback, the part where Snow is standing in front of a horde of charging horses? at’s real.

“We did it with Kit, and the [riders] stopped six or seven feet in front of him from a full gallop,” Camilla says.

“ at was interesting to do, because obviously you know he doesn’t know horses, and you have like 40 charging, galloping horses coming toward you. It’s pretty scary,” Camilla continues, chuckling at the memory. “We did that twice, but the impact and the shot it made are great, and for it not to be a CGI shot—actually seeing the real character going through the atmosphere of what it would have felt like—it helps the actors with their performances, too.”

Did Harington have any reservations about Camilla’s plan for the scene?

“He trusts me. We’re good friends. I told him, ‘I promise I won’t run you over,’ ” Camilla jokes. “I said, ‘Come on, it will look so good. It will be on the Emmy’s show reel!’ ”

Sure enough, the episode “Battle of the Bastards” won three Emmy Awards in 2016: for editing, writing and directing. Camilla has been working with Game of rones for six seasons, and they’re currently shooting a seventh.

As for Dan, he named a commercial the family worked on for the 2013 Grand National steeplechase in England as his favorite shot. Ask him why, and he’ll tell you the work speaks for itself. e commercial shows a group of horses racing through the streets of London, jumping cars, picnic tables, soccer goals, into and out of gardens, and through a skate park.

Watch the commercial as a casual viewer, and you’re entertained. Watch it with any understanding of horses, and you’re astounded—the shots are beautiful, and the horses aren’t bolting scared. ey’re performing.

“It really comes down to common sense. It’s just being in tune to the animals and understanding them,” Dan says. “First you teach them to go from A to B in a secure fashion, make sure the horse is comfortable, and then you bring in another prop, and you just build it up. Nothing in particular takes him by surprise, and eventually he will learn to trust you. He learns to respect that you’re not going to hurt him.”

NO DIVAS ALLOWED

e most di cult part of Dan’s job isn’t the incredible shots he’s pulled o or the sequences he’s coordinated— horses are not this horseman’s challenge.

“I would say hardest part of the job, it would be teaching the actors,” Dan says.

Between Dan, Camilla and Gerard, they’ve taught some of the most famous actors in the business to ride. When ri e-wielding Angelina Jolie gallops a Friesian sidesaddle through a forest in the 2003 lm Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, it was the Naprouses who taught her to ride—and Jolie did almost the entire scene herself.

Les Misérables, Snow White and the Huntsman, Mission Impossible, Monuments Men, Philomena, Downton Abbey, Doctor Who—the list of big-name productions the family

The Naprous family’s The Devil’s Horsemen company trains their horses to carry inexperienced actors and actresses, gallop in action scenes, and perform at liberty. Here the stallion Dante performs with Dan Naprous.

An equine actor’s days vary—sometimes it’s long hours of galloping and fight scenes, and other times it’s an easy day of walking and trotting, like actor Charles Dance is doing here on the set of Game of Thrones.

has worked on goes on and on, and it’s not slowing down.

Along with her work on the next season of Game of rones, Camilla is the horsemaster on the comic lm Wonder Woman, set to be released in June 2017.

“It’s quite interesting being on rones,” Camilla says. “I’ve had most of the cast for the past seven years, and watching their process of riding, some of them get better, and some of them actually weaken as time goes on.

“We just shot Wonder Woman, and there we have two weeks to teach each cast member, and then we go o on location to shoot,” Camilla continues. “And one of the actresses, she had ridden a tiny bit, but she was 52. Teaching someone at 52 to ride from scratch is quite hard. It’s fascinating seeing the di erent characters you come across.”

And then there are the stars who are as natural on a horse as they appear on screen.

“Channing Tatum is amazing on a horse, and Michael Fassbender is brilliant on a horse,” Camilla says. Tatum was in the saddle for his role in the 2011 movie e Eagle, and Fassbender starred in the 2011 Jane Eyre.

In the movie business, time is money, and Camilla and Dan don’t always get a lot of it when they’re teaching people to ride.

“It depends on how high pro le they are,” says Camilla. “Sometimes we’ll y out to wherever they are to teach them, or if they’re in England they’ll come to our stud, and we’ll teach them at our stud. Sometimes we’ll get six weeks to teach someone from scratch, and sometimes they will have never sat on a horse in their life, and we have two and a half hours to have them walk, trot, canter.”

But actor ego is seldom an issue.

Siblings Dan and Camilla Naprous rarely have time to get in costume on the set of films because they’re so busy directing the horses involved, but they still get their time in the spotlight during trick riding performances with The Devil’s Horsemen.

DREAMSTIME.COM/VIRGONIRA PHOTO

“It’s fascinating how who they are fades away as soon as they come into the kitchen [at the stud], and we put them on a horse—all of that nonsense is gone away a little bit,” Camilla says. “It’s just you and them and the horse. It really opens them up, and they can’t be maybe the person they want to be, or want to show people all the time, which I quite like about my job. Cut the bullshit!”

JUST A JOB

Do Dan and Camilla ever get starstruck by the people with whom they work? Not so much.

“You sometimes get awestruck by the sets, like right now we’re in Iceland,” Dan says. “Some of the places you get to go to, you could pinch yourself and go, ‘Am I really here?’ ” e only time Camilla’s felt giddy was when the family performed for Madonna.

“She asked us to come for her birthday and perform for her birthday, and there was a moment when we pulled up in our car at her house and were going, ‘Oh my God, Madonna is walking toward us. Oh my God.’ But apart from that, no,” says Camilla.

Dan put it more simply.

“It’s a job,” he says. “It’s a lot of paperwork.”

As you might have guessed, the movie business is all consuming when they’re lming.

“For example, we had an 8 [a.m.] on set today, so my team started at 5 this morning,” says Camilla, who’s currently working from Ireland, where the cast and crew of Game of rones are lming. Camilla rented a yard in Belfast for the horses, and she ships them on and o set each day. Days can be long for both the horses and humans involved, but it’s certainly not monotonous.

“My grooms go in and feed them, load them up,” she says. “ ey’ll be on the road at 6, arrive at 7, come o and go into costume, have all their gear put on, and then we’ll be on set at 8. en we usually wrap at 6, so they’re back at the stables by 8 at night.”

When Camilla needs a lot of horses for a particular set, her team will set up temporary stalls to save time with trailering. But other days, the horses are nished by 1 p.m. e work doesn’t leave a lot of time for hobbies, but during spare moments, you’ll still nd Dan and Camilla at some sort of horse function. Dan spends his free time training and competing in four-in-hand driving.

“It was a choice between dressage or carriage driving, because we tend to do both with the horses at home,” Dan says. “My father knew a legend in the sport named George Bowman, who he’s been good friends with for a long, long time, so through him we sort of got into the carriage driving.”

Dan entered his rst international driving competition in 2012, and more recently he placed second in the 2016 Hopetoun International Horse Trials CAI** (England) and third at the National Horse Driving Trials CAI** (England). e horses Dan uses for driving don’t cross over into lm work, though he says he does sometimes use his indoor driving competition team on set.

“I do sort of train them as youngsters, when they’re 4-year-olds, to go stand on the lm set, to get used to all that because even competition is like lming,” Dan says.

“You put a certain amount of pressure on them, and the horse from an early age has to understand no matter what ambient pressures are coming in, he will listen to you and have con dence that he has to continue working.”

“[Dan] absolutely has a massive passion for carriage driving,” Camilla says. “And it’s hard for him because carriage driving, especially in America, there’s a lot of money in it. It’s a very expensive sport.”

As for Camilla’s down time?

“I don’t have any hobbies. I just go to work, movie after movie after movie,” she says with a laugh. ere is one part of her life Camilla considers a break—her trick riding with e Devil’s Horsemen stunt team.

“Luckily, the [live shows] are on the weekend, and usually we only lm Monday through Friday,” she says.

When she’s the horsemaster on a lm, Camilla is responsible for everything—keeping actors safe on horseback, coordinating action and ght scenes with stunt riders, getting the liberty horses to hit their marks in a scene, and overseeing all the horses’ care and travels to and from the lm set. Her responsibilities in live stunt performances are more manageable.

“You don’t have to worry about being responsible for anyone else, so it’s kind of a sense of freedom,” Camilla says, pausing after a moment of sincerity before punctuating it with her dry humor. “I’m sure my knees will probably give up on me at some point, but until then I will carry on doing the shows.” ere is a possibility of a third generation of Naprouses carrying on the family lm work tradition.

“I have not so many ponies, but I have one for my grandson and my granddaughter,” says Gerard, 69, his voice lled with pride.

Dan has two children—Felix, 8, and Beatrix, 3—with wife Lucy Naprous, and they have already found their way to horseback, though not in quite the same fashion as Dan and Camilla. As Camilla jokes, they haven’t let the kids Roman ride ponies at a gallop just yet, but she takes a more serious tone when contemplating the future of the family business.

“It’s hard to get to that point of: Do you push them or not? We were pushed quite a bit,” Camilla says. “And everything is changing. Like when you look at Pony Club and things now, there’s so much safety involved. It’s kind of sad. When we were kids, we used to play cowboys and Indians, and you would fall o , and you’d get back on! It was all fun; that was what we did, but we’re kind of losing that.” Camilla also worries about the e ect a safety-conscious riding culture will have on her ability to nd the next generation of stunt riders. “Trying to nd boys to ride becomes harder and harder,” she says. “Obviously my generation is quite good—we had a lot of boys in Pony Club, a lot of boys rode—but now, especially in England, it’s very much a girl’s sport. It’s fascinating seeing what will happen in the next 30 or 40 years.”

The Naprous family uses their horses in live shows with The Devil’s Horsemen company to help train them before they star in a film or television show like Game of Thrones.

HELEN SLOAN/HBO PHOTO