'Outsiders' Postmortem: How'd They Film That ATV Battle?

Did that ATV showdown between Ryan Hurst’s Little Foster and Joe Anderson’s Asa in Tuesday’s episode of Outsiders have you itching to hop on one of the recreational vehicles yourself? Us, too. And according to Bobby King, stunt coordinator for the WGN America drama, that’s not a crazy idea. In fact, battering sticks and intense romantic rivalry aside, King tells Yahoo TV that people with athletic experience, and those who are regular bicycle riders can learn to ride an ATV pretty easily.

“You just need a little bit of a lesson, really,” King says. “[Out of] all of our actors, maybe one had had any experience on them, so we had to teach them. If you have any kind of athletic background, you could definitely pick it up. Although, biking, motorcycling, things like that, is different than riding ATVs. It’s a different center of gravity. If you have extensive experience on a motorcycle, you will have to unlearn some things. If you’ve never been on either, you will pick it up pretty quickly.

“Because it’s four wheels, and a motorcycle’s two wheels, a motorcycle leans into a curve, and the four wheeler does not really lean in… [the rider] has to lean. On a motorcycle, you and the motorcycle both lean, and if you do not lean into a curve on a four wheeler, it’ll flip, because all the weight is up top. You hear about Jeeps rolling over. You have to teach people that it’s like a Jeep. When you go into a curve, you sit inside. We had a little mantra on the set: ‘get your ass off the seat.’ You have to get your ass off the seat, and you sit inside the curve. If you’re making a left hand curve, you sit off the left side of the bike. You make a right hand curve, you sit off the right side, and literally, you have to get your ass completely off the seat.”

Then there’s the gas “pedal,” which isn’t a pedal, and doesn’t mirror the acceleration function of a motorcycle. King says that proved to be the most challenging aspect of ATV training. “On a motorcycle, the gas is on the right hand, and you’re able to move your wrist back and forth to give it gas,” he says. “An ATV, or quad, is thumb operated. We were thinking about making them all left-handed so the people who were right-handed would be more comfortable, but then it became so much trouble… we just decided that’s why there’s weeks practice, to get the actors capable of driving, giving it the gas with the thumb.”

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And the Outsiders stars had to remember all that while also projecting their characters and carrying the big sticks Foster and Asa were supposed to be whomping each other with as prodigal Asa tried to prove he deserved a spot among his Farrell relatives on Shay Mountain.

“Ah, the pit fight… extremely tough also because it was filmed in such a small location,” King says. “We had taught [the cast] in a much bigger parking lot, field area, but then we had to tighten down the area, otherwise you just couldn’t get those great shots. It was like a figure eight that was much tighter than they had experienced before. It took a lot of rehearsals, but they got the hang of it.”

King, a stunt coordinator and actor who has worked on The Fosters, The Last Ship, Star Trek Into Darkness, X-Men: First Class, and the Syfy guilty pleasure Big Ass Spider!, says the cast rehearsed the pit fight for two weeks, and then spent four days filming it, including the stunts where Asa pops a wheelie on his ATV and jams a pipe into Foster’s front wheel, causing Hurst’s imposing mountain man to flip his vehicle and land on the ground.

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“That was the toughest one,” King says of the flip, which was one of the few parts of the pit fight scene where Hurst’s stunt double, former pro wrestler Jay R. Adams, took over.

“You know how they jump off ropes and get thrown to the ground, things like that? It came second nature to him. He hit the ground, jumped up, not a scratch. It’s amazing. That was Jay… he walked in, became Ryan, and then with his experience, he was unbeatable. Unbeatable. We had to fake that he got beaten in that battle. That one was tough too because we had to dig out part of the pit and put pads underneath, because we were sitting on top of a coal deposit. That’s no joke. There were bits of soft coal, and around that were huge boulders, one that was four-feet wide.”

Anderson’s stunt double, Ele Bardha, also had some wild moments filming portions of the pit fight, including rolling the ATV several times during rehearsals.

“He’s a very experienced motorcycle and car guy, and if you know how to do it, you can actually step off the bike,” King says. “It sounds like jumping out of the elevator right before it hits the ground, but there are moments where you can see it coming over, and you just step off the thing and it rolls over by itself. The ATVs can [jump] up like a wheelie, which is the second hardest thing, and they’re notorious for flipping over. People sit too far back, they hit the gas really quick… that’s why a lot of them have governors on them, so it will have a slow, steady takeoff. All the people who race ATVs take those off, and that’s why you see them do wheelies. We had to work on that to actually make ours do it.”

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Of the show’s cast, King says Anderson, Kyle Gallner, and David Morse were the quickest learners on the ATVs, but he thinks Hurst had the most challenging performance in “Doomsayer,” the series’ second episode.

“Ryan probably had the most on his plate, because in the first episode, [Foster’s] younger brother gets killed. Now the father [Morse], who loves his younger brother more than him, is giving him a hard time, making him feel like he’s not worthy,” King says. “He has all that to deal with,” as well as the fact that recently returned Asa still has eyes for his ex, and Foster’s current, girlfriend, G’Winveer (Gillian Alexy).

“Ryan’s journey in that particular sense, in that scene, was probably more intense than anybody’s. Yeah, I would say that most impressive was Ryan.”

Outsiders airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on WGN America.