Life Uncut - The Stunt That Changed Everything: Life After Harry Potter. Uncut with David Holmes

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Today’s guest is someone many of us grew up watching even if we didn’t realise it. David Holmes was a stunt double in the Harry Potter films, mostly for Harry but he also doubled for quite a few other characters and contributed to one of the most iconic movie franchises of our generation. But during filming, an accident left David paralysed from the chest down at just 25 years old. His memoir The Boy Who Lived and his documentary of the same name tell the story of that accident, but more importantly, what happened after. In the book and the doco, David shares how his friendships are what kept him alive, how his identity has shifted since the accident and the complicated reality of rebuilding a life when everything changes in a second. In today’s chat we speak about: Losing sensation but finding the best s3x he’s ever experienced A particularly beautiful love story - David and his partner (who also has a spinal cord injury) falling in love and ‘heeling’ a lot of themselves together What it was like being a stunt performer for 7 Harry Potter films BTS of Harry Potter and his close friendship with Daniel Radcliffe David’s accident that happened on set  Fighting for 3 years for proper compensation Blame after an accident like this David’s advocacy for disabled people The friendships he has maintained The future of the creative world like stunting with AI “If Someone Offered Me A Magic Pill To Get My Legs Back, I’d Be Reluctant To Take It” You can get a copy of David’s BookYou can find him on Instagram  You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit  Produced by Keeshia Pettit Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany and I'm Keisha and today's guest is a very funny, very vivacious, very inspirational character. He's somebody that we all probably grew up watching without knowing we were watching him. Now let me explain. we're speaking to David Holmes and David Holmes was Harry Potter's stunt double not just Harry Potter but many of the other characters in the franchise he I don't know if we say he stunted for or he doubled for I don't know which one it is but we can ask yeah we'll ask you you can say stunted you can say double as long as you don't change the s in stunt we're all right so you are talking to the world's first British player and Harry many times Malfoy many times Ron many times

Sometimes even Hermione, Neville, I perform stunts for the young cast. All the young cast of the first two films and then Harry going forwards on the last of the franchise. How do you stunt for Hermione? Do you have to wear a wig and hair and makeup? You know when the troll smashes through the bathroom stalls? Yeah. There's a top shot where all of the wooden stalls explode.

You couldn't put a young child or a young stunt double around exploding balsa wood because of the splinter risk and all that lot so that top shot is me and uh yeah i've got a great photo of me in a hermione wig i pulled off funnily enough i feel like you'd still look great in that i'll take the hair back that's for sure during the filming of the seventh harry potter film dave you suffered a really tragic accident that completely changed the rest of your life you were paralyzed from the chest down and you were just 25 years old now we have had the pleasure of watching your documentary that is called The Boy Who Lived. You also have a memoir of your own with the same title, The Boy Who Lived. And in that book and in the documentary,

you shared how your friendships kept you alive, how they completely changed the course of your life and how your identity has changed from before your accident to now how you're living. But you also spoke about the complicated reality of rebuilding a life when it changes in an instant. it really is a fascinating story and one of complete inspiration talking about your life before the accident in the franchise but the resilience that you've shown and the way that you show up to life every day since and i think it's been about 17 years or so correct me if i'm wrong but i was really excited to talk to you today so welcome to the podcast thank you very much you guys are in sydney uh we touched on it and they're like meeting each other but um

yeah australia been for a turbulent time recently and it's nice to see the the sense of community that you've all shown around such a horrendous thing now i know you know what it's like to navigate trauma and trauma within my own community and my own loved ones and uh it takes a village and all that lot and uh it's nice to see you all pulling each other through what is a very difficult time, but also a time for healing. So yeah, I take my hat off to the Sydney and the great wider Australian community. That's beautifully said. To switch gears a little bit from that, we do tend to start every one of our interviews with what we call an accidentally unfiltered. It is your most embarrassing story. I will give you two. One of them is when you

suffer a spinal cord injury, you lose bladder and bowel function. I've shat myself in the most wonderful opulent of places i'm very careful with what i eat so if i roll the dice on the dinner which is like not knowing how my food is prepared properly it better be good that's for sure so there's some great restaurants and suffer the consequences afterwards but this story's a fun so i was in a place called zermatt in switzerland which is uh one of the most beautiful towns in the well uh turns out everyone's nice to you in switzerland when you're in a wheelchair because i think it's your last holiday at home oh my days my husband is swiss i'm gonna tell him that for people who might miss the context of that uh euthanasia is common in switzerland i'm on this

alpine train it's called the victoria junfau and it takes you up to the back side of mont blanc to see the glaciers so you look one way and you see zermatt and the city down in the valley then you see the matterhorn mountain which is the mountain that's on the front of the toga and packets and then you see the back side of mont blanc and this giant glacier which is vastly retreating anyway after a very nice meal the night before i'm on the train halfway up the train i feel something funny then i smell something funny and i realize oh shit it's happened so then i am on the top of a mountain with only one disabled toilet with my friend my best friend danny lawrence who is a ex-gymnast trying to work out how we clear this up so i said to danny do

yourself a favor you don't want to get um covered in shit um so if you can take your clothes off so he's in his pants and shoes i am now lifted out of my wheelchair and onto the toilet seat whilst danny's in his pants and shoes it's only then we realize we've left the toilet door unlocked because of family the doors to see me and danny's arms shit all over my ass naked to like a family for finding the disabled toilet so i'm guessing i saw them for life you're like it's not what it looks like it's exactly what it looks like they got two beautiful sites that on that trip they got the swiss alps and they also got that yeah i know yeah they got the brown alps for my ass so that was one of them and there are i have a partner she's also a high

level project so uh the two of us have to navigate intimacy by working things out we were at this villa on the sofa over there a couple of years ago and we were just at the early stages of our relationship we get hoisted onto the sofa by our care staff we're sitting in front of the film there is the most powerful thunderstorm going outside incredibly romantic um and i am kissing her and you know with my one functioning arm doing what i can do with the lady parts and i was like i'm just going for it so we called one of our caregivers in to cut her underwear off that's already funny folding half between her legs to do what i want to do we use our phones to call our caregivers it's only after 30 40 minutes so we both realized that our phones

and slip down the edge of the couch oh no so now i find myself stuck i'm trying to breathe through her nether regions like a scuba gear going free free fruit scouting as best i can to call our caregivers i'm stuck there for a good 30 minutes maybe 40 minutes we are laughing our heads off best 40 minutes of her life i bet yeah our trusty caregiver just pokes their head out like out the room and said you guys all right and that's when my Rosie shouts out no we're not actually um they've stuck so um yeah I mean as I got lifted up I said tell Mrs Holmes he died how he wanted to um oh yeah I was gonna say David there's there's gotta be worse ways to go what a great way to die like not many worse ways to go also there's not many men that would spend

40 minutes like that's a high value boyfriend yeah I'm sure she will um she will bear witness to my uh commitment to the call I think what it is is when you lose so much of what it means to be a man and what you identify with what I have which was I was not the tallest or strongest of men but I could quite happily you know be a good performer in certain environments not just as a non-performer but as a lover and that was taken away from me and for 10 years i parked that and now i'm learning to rediscover it with someone i love we're both learning to love the bodies we hated with each other and it's a really powerful beautiful journey so it's one of those things where all the doctors say you'll never really feel or find pleasure again and i can assure you

you absolutely can and you you just learn a different way like i'll encourage every reader right now sorry listener and yourself if you tense your um tense your ass basically pull up your pelvic floor you can actually feel a tingle in the bottom of your feet that is your paralymphthatic system doing it now is that awkward no it's all right don't worry let it you know flex it so that is a different nervous system to your normal nervous system via your spinal cord it's actually for your blood vessels and stuff that is how we have learned to feel each other and how to find pleasure through that route so you just find a way and uh we find a way well we were going to talk about that a bit later but we seem to have gotten straight there i have heard you say that

you've been having both of you you and your partner rosie have been having the best sex of your life since you've been together yeah big time has that been a real discovery like has that been a real journey for the two of you to get there yeah I mean it's hot right because we like any good romantic story you know even down to the vampire porn that everyone reads there is barriers there is a journey it's not just what most people take for granted which is the physical act of lovemaking it's you know working out positions it's working out what feels nice it's connecting to our bodies when we're so disconnected to it and yeah we are having an amazing journey together it's like it's rewarding in thrilling super super sexy it's us finding a

way and you know that's a true testament to human beings a ability to connect and we are given these devices that we're talking to uh each other on right now it's supposed to make us connect more but it's actually made us more lonely in society and more disconnected now connection that we have is just is mad you know like it's not just connecting over our shared injuries it's connecting over like our love and our journey to life together and whilst navigating all the barriers that we have to navigate not just in our bodies but with staff with logistics with the fact that we're both in wheelchairs and we can't even hold each other and take each other but you know our first kiss took a team of four people to get close enough to go to have that

post this yeah what it means is just it means more because we had to work for it you know so I'm in the most rewarding and loving relationship that I've ever had in my life I'm very happy and I can only imagine how much there was that mutual understanding that contributed to how much it meant to both of you I am curious and please tell me if I'm overstepping by asking this question when it comes to spinal cord injury there are obviously different systems that can be affected how is it that both of you are able to feel like pleasure and sensation if you are both you know i am not sure of her injuries but how does that work she's very similar to mine she's the same sort of level so um i'm a c5 tetrastroke podriplegic because it affects all volumes and

she's a c4 and it works because you learn to breathe together you learn to connect via different nervous system in your body by really tuning into a hidden part of your subconscious as well you know when you can't directly feel it but you have to imagine what's going on so it's about open communication it's about telling each other what we're doing to each other and then really thinking about that i mean like it's it's a journey it's not just wham bam thank you ma'am and um i like and it's never the destination you know what i mean like it's the journey yeah i imagine you'll be able to obviously attest to this but when you take away a sense every other sense is heightened to another extreme it's on even things like kinesiology and reiki and all of

these things all of these treatments and massages and where they don't actually touch you they're so close to you and it's an energy and they're talking through it you get to the point that the rest every other sense is so attuned to that that you feel it and I and I imagine every other sense for you guys is just tenfold so it's it is so much more beautiful and intense and you guys were long distance as well which makes the connection even greater because you have to get to know each other on a completely non-physical level yeah i mean we only started getting to know each other just writing emails you know i had never even seen her and i already loved her and uh she was very shy when i first met her you know it's like she has to navigate not only

living with a spinal cord injury but also the societal pressures of what it is to be a woman and i can you know talk to what is to lose that level of masculinity but she's obviously gone on the journey from the other side of the coin and uh it's just as a shy individual she couldn't really look me in the eye i had to tell her look up you know and the first time we met she had never stayed at someone's house before because she couldn't because she's got to travel with staff and she's got to have profiling beds and the right mattresses and all of those things that I have in my home because I built my own house.

So I knew she was building a house project up in Sheffield. So I wanted to encourage her to have home control technology which allows for more independence, whether that is access control doors that you can just ask your phone to open or lights or whatever. any act of independence that you get back is a win and i've got a home where i'm more independent in it than most or than all able-bodied people because my voice controls every door every light every tv a lot so i wanted to encourage her to to invest in that technology yeah so i said next

time you're in london come down and uh see my home and um we can meet for the first time and I and Rosie has sensation above our level of injury so our face feels the same and our neck feels the same and our shoulder feels the same and the first thing I do to anyone with a spinal injury is like I ask them where are you you know so with my working hand I will greet them on the bit that they can feel so normally the top of the shoulder and I put my hand on the top of Rosie's shoulder I was like there you are I was like now look at me and then I saw her eyes and then the wind blew her hair in her mouth and she was like trying to blow it out because she can't lift the arm up and I was like can I get that for you and brush the hair out of her face and then

this is just such a beautiful love story you just took me on the most romantic journey with you I have tears we saw Wuthering Heights last night this is a much better love story yeah so like any beautiful flower i've seen the journey that she has had as a woman where like the light of our love together has just seen her blossom and bloom and now she just she takes my breath away every day i see it can i ask about you know how both of you had previous hopes and dreams and you've had these accidents and I can imagine that and for women there's probably an added layer that if they had dreamt of having children of their own before those things are taken away have the two of you been able to kind of heal a lot of the grief of losing that together

by being in a relationship together and forming new dreams a massive massive like healing journey for both of us yeah learning to love the bodies that we're you know in when you have an injury like this it's grief that you carry the dead body around with you for the rest of your life you know I look at my legs and I look at my body below my injury and I'm completely you know that it's there but it's not me anymore so I'm from here up you know what I mean but with our journey together i've learned to accept and so is she that we are still the same person from there down yeah so yeah it's a it's a grief that creeps up on you it only takes your wheelchair to be broken for you to be stuck in bed for you to remember to go back to that oh god i am that vulnerable

yeah so it's an everyday thing it's not like okay i'm better now because like all grief it's everlasting you know I you know I loved the old Mick you know what I mean and I will always long to have that person back but at the same time like I say to Rosie if it took me breaking my neck to meet the woman of my dreams I'll take it so um yeah I mean you need the next thing that you write needs to be a love story Dave but funny enough funny enough is that what you're writing yeah i'm waiting for it to be commissioned because i'm not gonna spend you know the four months of writing it and also reflecting back on our journey without a proper commitment from the agent and stuff yeah but um yeah some parts oh good all right well we'll keep our eye open

but let's see if we can go back to i mean you said the old you and the old body who you were before the accident who you were as a kid and how you got into gymnastics and stunt doubling i was a very brave very confident small child uh with far too much energy and my mum found gymnastics was a sport that i not only got rid of that energy but it was a great way for me to channel the strengths that i had as a small individual school was not easy for me because of being small and as a young man you know we give young small men a bad rap you know why is it not okay for me to write on my dating profile that I won't date a woman over a certain weight but you ladies can say won't date a man over under five foot eight and it's all acceptable so true I don't

know how I mean you can tell us how tall you were we're the same height five foot on five one small yeah I mean on the record I do and have dated shorter I married a very tall man but I didn't date people shorter than me yeah so I navigated a difficult school journey but found that it was a great way to channel the bullying that I had at school into my safe space that was gymnastics I was around other gymnasts that were also small and were my best friends and still are and I was able to excel in a sport that gave me confidence or expanding my confidence and that I could have a safe space in and then at the age of 14 my gymnastics coach at the time was a stuntman he got a phone call from my old boss Greg Powell looking for a young stunt double on a film called

Lost in Space in 1997 and I spent the most formative summer of my life at Shepparton Film studios hanging around with Matt LeBlanc who at the time was probably the most famous man on the planet playing Joey from Friends and like doing stunts like diving out of the way of pyrotechnics riding robots being on collapsing film sets and I was treated like an equal like an artist it was the first time that adults had talked to me in that way and then I just knew that that was my career choice growing up went back to school and then a couple of years later i got a phone call saying do you want to come and try a stunt test on this film called harry potter something and something something this little tiny film yeah the books are out and then i read them and then

i went in for the first broomstick test they strapped me to a truck drove the truck a broomstick on the back of a truck chris columbus was looking at me down a camera lens i'd been gifted the glasses and the cloak by someone in wardrobe and yeah we's driven at 40 mile an hour at the back of a truck down the runway at the studios uh chris was whooping and hollering at the end of the test and then pointed to greg and said greg this is our guy and that was it i skilled being the world's first british player and the lead stunt double role for harry but how old were you at this age 17 is that i mean did this give you a bit of street cred like back at school and stuff well i left school straight away i went back i just started the second year of college

i told them i'm gonna quit uh go and work on this film franchise uh they said uh are you sure you want to leave your education behind i told them how much money i was gonna get paid a day and are you happy to talk about what your first page neck was yeah it was it wasn't a full stump wage but it was pretty i mean like jaw-dropping money for a 17 year old yeah it was more than what each was earning in a week per day um and then a bit later on the royalty checks come in it's probably not a good idea to give an 18 year old with a lot of confidence a hundred thousand pounds because i spend it all on sex drugs and rock and roll and uh did you actually it's gone in a year yeah so So, yeah, lots of fun.

So, you know, moved into a house, had loads of people live with me after parties every weekend, you know, stunts by day and parties by night. Living the life of an 18-year-old. Yeah, but an 18-year-old that's, like, loaded and cool as well. Yeah, and then I worked as a stunt performer up until my accident when I was 24, done not just Harry Potter movies but Prince of Persia, The Lost Legion, travelled to countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Slovakia, done National Treasure 2, like loads of films.

So, yeah, it wasn't just Harry Potter but that was the main bulk of my work. How much of your time, because I imagine the Harry Potter films aren't shot super quickly and there are so many of them, they took up such a huge chunk, how much of a year were you spending on harry potter with that film and with that crew first two years was flat out i had two week break between the productions that was it wow and then we had a seven month break between two and three where i pursued my training to get be qualified stunt performer and then it was another six months between three and four and then three months between four and five six months between five

and six yeah and then four months between six and seven so and most of them took a year like pretty much a whole year of your time so yeah a year of riding broomsticks and you know yeah it was uh it was brilliant it was just the best experience any young man and any young professional could ever ask for I really learned my craft got to interact with the best of British talent in not just the stunt department but the actors on screen and also the people behind the screen so I had the best education you could get in the filming industry. From reading your book and from watching your documentary it's very clear how close the cast and the crew become you really did seem like you became like family members how much I mean obviously you have a beautiful

friendship with Daniel Ratcliffe the star of Harry Potter how much did you feel the two of you were just like destined to be brothers in the early days because he was younger I was his PE teacher so we would bring him to the stunt department I'd lock the doors and do with him all the things that an insurance company would have a nightmare we was able to create a space where he could play and just be a kid be normal whilst also keep yeah be keeping up with his physical education and learning skills and building a uh you know a body that could you know handle not only the stunts and harry potter but also the stuff that he's done in his career afterwards yeah so yeah we was able to form this tight family unit not just for dan but all the kids because the hogwarts

express after the first film went out was very much left the station and was gathering speed and outside the film studio it was crazy pressure and crazy hype around it but inside the studio we kept it the same there was similar crew members all the time and uh they were able to become better actors but and grow up as the young people and the young adults that we now all see in the world and i couldn't be prouder of all of them but daniel especially because the way he handles himself the way he sticks up to what he believes in and the way he's willing to challenge himself with the roles he picks so um yeah he's uh i love him uh you guys got to watch grow up on the screen and I get to watch them grow as young adults.

I think it's really evident. If you guys haven't seen the documentary, The Boy Who Lived, go and watch it because the friendship between you all, not just you and Dan, but all of you is really beautiful and I think it's made some huge, it's had a huge impact in your life, those people that have continued to show up for you. But can we go back to that time and can you tell us about the accident that happened in the seventh film?

Yeah, of course, yeah. So you wouldn't be doing your job as a stunt performer if you're not willing to push boundaries and build on what had gone before with regards to a stunt. Now, in Harry Potter, we'd seen loads of spells and spell reactions with wires. As the seventh film builds up, we were trying to, you know, create things that were more violent and more serious because the spells were growing. so i was rehearsing harry fighting nagini the snake day before i'd done the rehearsal that was a long flight and it was decided to shorten the flight and make the it more snappy the archaic methods used to perform that gag are now not used in the film industry anymore but a weight bag was dropped i was lifted by the wire attached to me and where the flight

beforehand allowed me to change my rotation i just couldn't rotate in enough time and i went into a wall at a ridiculous amount of like speed there was crash mats on the wall but um my chest folded into my nose my spinal cord dislocated at the c6 c7 vertebrae was paralyzed from the from the point on so my first uh point of view was to recover my breath and then connect to my body that i was disconnected to and then it was the long slow ride to the hospital in the ambulance and then the long long long year to the first initial recovery did everyone know i mean obviously i've heard you speak about it in the moment you've you've been pulled against the wall You know something's wrong because you can't feel your legs

or anything anymore. What was happening with everyone there? Did everyone know this had gone horribly wrong or did everyone think it was a perfect practice? No, as soon as I recovered my breath because I was windy because my, you know, my chest folded up so my lungs collapsed almost fully. But as soon as I recovered my breath, I announced I'd broken my neck

and it's pretty obvious because there was an S-bend in my spinal cord where my neck was. so yeah greg asked me to squeeze his hand my fingers where the paralysis had set in my fingers didn't work so i couldn't grip his hand so it was i knew that all four limbs were affected and then i was in and out of consciousness like over a period of about an hour while they stabilized me i made sure that i got my best friend mark to secure the camera that had got the footage on it to make sure that i was legally protected which was being very smart and with that footage i was able to go through the three-year journey of an insurance policy claim it was either

that or i take all the brothers and their endless supply of money for lawyers to court so i just decided two things one harry potter means a lot to a lot of people i didn't want to sully that myself included and two did i have enough energy to not only focus on my own physical recovery but then take on a giant corporation and go for a more serious allegation such as corporate man stalker or something you know david it's really interesting you say that i've got a friend who's had a spinal cord injury and through an accident and went through a tumultuous journey through the legal system and the thing that was so difficult for them was basically to put it into a nutshell they couldn't continue to live their life because if they continue to live their life and thrive or

be in a more positive mindset it affected the way that the court would kind of view their damages and what would and what would be owed to them and that went on for years and years and years and insurance companies no one wants to pay it was just like this person had already been paralyzed they were then paralyzed from living their life any further and it was just it was such a horrific experience for them to not be able to recover in any way psychologically from what had happened because they were literally trapped yeah well every aspect of your life is broken down to a pound sign yeah you know like an insurance company or reluctant to pay out you have to prove that had your accident not happened you would have achieved x amount in your career

um had your accident not happened you would have had a family of this many people had your accident not happened you'd have been here there and doing these things and they say no you you would have amounted to nothing and you have to prove it otherwise so you have to hear legal arguments on people that never know you try and judge you on what your ability is to thrive in your own life now I was good at my job and I think I've proven after the job that I can be good at quite a lot of things I produced my own documentary I wrote my own book I've traveled the world I've built my own house and a few others so I know that if I apply myself to anything I can be successful yeah now the insurance company are there to argue that you wouldn't often you have to hear those

counter arguments and it's very emotionally damaging to go through that and they don't even talk about mental health in it they just like you just fall down to numbers you know I was never off the therapy i was never like you know all of those things that they're reluctant to pay for and like it's expensive being disabled yeah you know i am in a lovely country but it costs me and rosie six figures to go on a holiday like this yeah it's it's not like just jumping on a plane no not like jumping on them we have to pay for staff the wheelchairs that we're sitting in a 20 30 000 pounds the cushion that i'm sitting on like 700 pounds like my staff bill at home is you know quarter of a million pound a year just to live that's before i do anything before i travel

or i you know make any sort of like that's what i want to do in my life so yeah all of those things are boiled down by an insurance company and then argued against and david you don't have to answer this but the question comes with how does the everyday person that has an accident like this continue to afford to live if they don't get their insurance claims but I imagine for you I would have thought it'd be pretty clear-cut you were very successful you were in the seventh film of one of the biggest franchises in the world your accident was caught on footage how long did you have to fight to get your insurance payment three and a half years still three and a half years and you would have had all the people behind you and like yeah all the people behind me everyone

gave witness statements everybody in the film industry that worked with oscar winning directors you know wrote me lovely statements saying how good i was at my job it was undeniable with regards to where my career would have been by now and i had to still wait three and a half years my life in limbo i couldn't buy a house to build i couldn't travel on a holiday i couldn't do anything so yeah it was it's horrendous the whole thing's horrendous like we're about to have a wave of unemployment across many industries because of ai yeah yeah i have friends that are lawyers that are worried about their job and um yeah if you are a lawyer for an insurance company giving counter arguments against someone's payout I'll be happy for you to be unemployed by an algorithm

I've got to tell you yeah I bet fair enough there was a really uh remarkable perspective that you had and and this was shared in your book and in the documentary and when it comes down to the personal blame and I thought for you to be able to have that perspective at 25 like I don't even know if I'd have that now at 32 I don't know if I would ever get there you didn't hold any one person accountable no ain't blame you hold on to that the person you hurt the most is yourself of course I go a few times I'm not perfect of course I have those days when I'm stuck in bed or you know in the last 17 years I've spent a year and a half on in bed due to complications or surgeries and stuff and of course you have to really dig deep to find positivity in those things

but yeah hate and blame is like it's not only that that negativity doesn't really help your recovery your physical or emotional recovery and what's worse than breaking your neck is seeing your pain in your loved one's eyes and i just had to accept that it had happened and then realize that nothing's going to change if i'm sitting there feeling sorry for myself but yeah it takes some mental fortitude it's not if you know it is every day you have to put the work in those individuals you have to look at really the corporation as a whole you know the the facts that you know there was a duty of care by a giant corporation that was taken not in the right way and it's only with age and understanding how business is run that i realized that it was a

catalog of errors that led to my accident not just one individual so to try and put the blame on one individual early on when you know do you know what corporation means like the etymology of it corpse which is an orator that is to speak from a dead entity so when someone's to blame in a corporation all they do is they just sack the ceo and replace them with someone else that actually checks out doesn't it they all do that don't blame the dead can't you so um yeah that's the way that all these giant companies shun responsibility in our lives and uh god knows they're really responsible for a lot of things right now aren't they david how did your friendships change after the accident um some of them uh formed a lot tighter and closer and some of them

over years have whittled away i think for those who love me some of them have to do a bit of self-preservation by creating some distance because they see that my journey is up and i understand that and I don't feel for them and then it's amazing how many friends you get when your mindset is spend the money and kill yourself you know which it was for many years before I found my relationship with Rosie you know I had a lot a lot of parties and a lot of holidays that I shared with people and a lot of gifts and all of those things that I was able to do and experiences that I was able to share with people that I thought I was close with age is one of those things that teaches you that you get to a certain age and you can count real friends on one or two

hands and I'm now at the age where I really value the real friends in my life and I'm learning to let go of the ones that are fallen by the wayside what are some of the things that changed in your mindset after the accident from who you were before to who you are after obviously everything changed for you physically but as as a person and the way you viewed life the way you uh the way you showed up to handle things um perspectives yeah I mean it's a very philosophical journey I have learned to be kind to myself for finding it hard because it is fucking hard but I've also learned to lean into my strength and uh have confidence in who i am like after you survive a broken neck most things are quite trivial you know what i mean like so for example you guys all lost two

years of your life with covid soon as that happened i was like oh i've been here before i can survive this yeah like yeah it was like nothing it actually gave a few people in my life a bit of perspective because all of a sudden their civil liberties and their lives were taken away and it made them reflect on oh dade's gone through this like times 10 and he's still here and still filing and still living so it still is one of those things that we all ignore our trauma we all ignore our difficult things and when you can't run away from your problems you can't exercise them away you have to find different coping strategies I have coping strategies you know I look after myself every day whether that's the food that I put in my mouth or the amount of

attention I pay to you know finding the sunshine or listening to great music or watching a great film you know like art and creation is the best of what we do as human beings and if you're not creating you're just taking so I try and create every day in some way whether that's a memory shared with people like you know paying attention to a beautiful sunset or you know an amazing bird of prey flying over um or writing something nice or you know whatever it is I try and create and you have been doing a lot of creating lately you actually recently posted I've pushed myself more than ever to be visible as a disabled person with a platform challenging the narrative of victimhood and showing that a good life is still possible despite the physical and systemic

barriers I've done public speaking released my own audiobook appeared as a voice actor in the new audible Harry Potter audiobook worked with multiple charities and traveled the world when I could you seem like the type of person who if there's a will you will find a way and you seem to have an active mind where you're always wanting to do stuff and like you know set new challenges and reach them when it comes to work and your ability to like create your documentary write your book you know be a voice actor how much did that affect your sense of purpose massively it um like as all of us if you are able to find purpose in anything in life you can have an enriched life most people think a disabled life is just for them and i'm like no no i have a great

life i have a really really really great life i have great relationships with my friends family with my partner i have a great perspective on how i see the gifts that the world gives us every day and your ability to know to have a good life and a good perspective lies within yourself you know i was able to break my neck and stay the same person if anyone asks me what i'm most proud of it's probably that do you think that the way society views disabled people is completely inaccurate and wrong and needs to change yeah everyone should know that um you know you could be in this position and you probably will be in this position at some point in your life where you're reliant on other human beings where you're vulnerable where age and time are cruel

things and after a certain amount of years your body breaks down yeah if people invested in my community today it's better for their tomorrow yeah so um yeah 4 000 people in the uk alone over 4 000 people get diagnosed with a spinal cord injury it can happen from a random fall it can happen from a blood clot in your spinal cord it can happen from cancer it can happen from any number of ways whether it's an accident or whether it's a medical related issue it can happen to you so to ignore that fact that we all do and like i did pre-accident and means that you're starting on the back foot straight away can i ask um you had a really tight group of friends and forgive me because i have forgotten his name um you had two really good friends one

that really really moved in with you and looked after you and showed up for you and another one who ended up taking your place as Harry's stunt double what was that period like I guess for both of you for you knowing that this accident had just happened to you and now one of your closest friends is about to go in and do the same thing and I guess for him knowing that he has to front up and do something that has just completely changed your life yeah I think I actually asked him to do the job he was going to leave Harry Fire and go work on other productions and I just wanted dan's safety in his hands really so um i said did you mind stepping up and being harry um reluctantly he said yes and then went on to finish the franchise and perform the gag that

put me in this wheelchair so uh that stunts for you you know like we are the people that do the stuff that most people on screen take for granted so that and then my relationship with tommy doesn't work with me anymore and i'm very happy for him to have a life where he doesn't have to worry about taking care of me anymore i mean our relationship didn't end on the best of terms but i'm hoping that through the lens of time we would be able to rebuild our relationship and go back to being close again shared a lot of life together so most relationships go through a tumultuous and turbulent ending and ours I like to believe that the end is not right now and that we still will have a future together just with a bit of a break cause you know families go through ups and downs

yeah you spoke previously and I'm really interested to get your take on you know the the future of creative industries with the use of AI and I mean we kind of joked about the fact that you wouldn't mind if insurance lawyers had their jobs their jobs taken by an algorithm but what will the future of ai do to people like yourself you know the people in the stunt world i always think the audiences will still have a need for human-made stories made by humans and that even though the algorithm is going to get better and better i think originality and real human creation and art is going to be valued more now stunts are always going to be stunts like tom cruise got gets bums on seats because he hangs off of planes and jump with dams and we see the

stunt rehearsals as part of the promotion for the production so i think going forwards it's going to be a turbulent time but i do still think that good directors good actors good stunt performers good camera operators are still going to be valued even more so when we come out of the other side of oh that's just a cg image that's just a lie you know when the truth is at the moment subjective like with all the stuff that we see on social media we don't know it's real the value in real truth is going to be quite prevalent but it's just right now we've got to go through this time i kind of feel like there's parallels running when we started this conversation you spoke about your connection with your partner rosie and the fact that you know the life that you

used to live was sex drugs rock and roll and now this real intimate personal connection that is this most beautiful form of love that you've ever experienced i almost see that there's a parallel of that with this ai creation world and then the real human connection world that is just valued so much more you can't replace that connection and emotion not in this place it's uh human beings like we need each other much as we can yearn for independence and stuff just trust me spend a week in bed not talking to someone soon we'll latch on to the nearest milkman to have a conversation with david i'd like to ask you just a few questions to finish up if you could write a paragraph to yourself your younger self before the accident what would you

say don't worry that you are going to go through tough times but that is true for all human beings you know we all end up losing the things that we love the people that we love and loss is part of the journey I experienced the greatest of all losses at the age of 24 and celebrating my 25th birthday a changed man but I held on to my core values and to the core person that who I am so just try not to lose that sense of self because you can retain it regardless of what you go for what have you learned about love oh it finds a way you know like there is someone for everyone in this world you just have to be receptive to it but yeah love starts with yourself first you know i mean you can't love anyone properly unless you love yourself for 14 years of my life

i was learning to love myself again and then i actually let go of so much of trying to find myself and it's only when i let go when i stopped trying to find me so hard that's when i found her that's really beautiful i mean finding someone who grows flowers in the darkest parts of you it's a zach bryan lyric and uh she is my flower i've got to tell you and i'm hers you're both very lucky people to have each other yeah we are the last thing i wanted to ask you on that is what would you just say now to everybody listening as somebody that has been on such a tumultuous journey and you have gone through so much and you've overcome so much just a message to people listening give up on thinking that there's a destination for anything in life

it's the journey it's one foot in front of the other it's one change of perspective it's one tragedy away from harmony you know like give up on the destination you know it's not like when i earn enough money that i'm gonna be here or when i this house i'm gonna be here and it's none of that it's the waking up and being grateful for the day you know i mean being grateful to wake up wiggle your toes breathe independently be grateful for the air in your lungs you're not a thing like i know people that have to breathe through ventilators they still live a great fulfilling life so if you can practice gratitude in some way every day then it sort of leaks out of you other people are very receptive to it like i'm a sponge

i can feel people's energy from the mile off and if i put out the right energy then i received the right energy back I feel like I needed that advice more right now than in many previous times in my life so thank you for that uh the last thing I want to ask you is you're always busy you're always doing something what's you know what's the next project that you'd like to work on or can you talk about what you're currently working on well I mean so very much feel like the uh shameful disabled family member locked in a one of the towers at Hogwarts castle Netflix by the Warner brothers franchise i'd like them to work with me more yeah i have some great creative ideas there is a an amazing wikipedia page about a story that happened in 1917 in halifax nova scotia

have you seen chernobyl i haven't seen it the documentary you mean or the place no the six-part miniseries yes i have seen that yeah right i would like to tell the story of the halifax explosion which would be a period drama and i'd like to tell that story producing it and using all of the old harry potter cast to tell that story i'd like to you know make that and create that and tell that story at the same time netflix or warners whoever buys them are releasing the new harry potter tv series so that there is a fan base there is a great story to be told I'm always writing and looking at finding threads to bring that story together. I am hopefully writing a romantic novel that talks about two disabled people finding love together based on my own love journey.

And I'm always just pushing for disabled people to be better represented and received in a society. You know, people always say, you know, this doctor's got this cure and paralysis will be fixed. Like, regardless of whether spinal cord injury is fixable or not, there'll always be children born into wheelchairs. So why don't we fix society to accept me for how I am now instead of trying to fix me? And most people will end up in that position at some point of their life.

Yeah. Someone offered me a magic pill to get my legs back again, I'd be reluctant to take it, to be honest. Wow. would you really yeah if it meant losing rogy i would i wouldn't take it oh you just need to write this romantic novel yeah it's actually it's so refreshing like that is such a powerful statement that you just said that's a powerful statement about where you are in your journey your body your acceptance where you are and what you've learned about love like to be able to say

that your love right now is just that that nothing would ever beat that is a really beautiful thing if you asked me that four years ago i would have said i'd rather do 30 years in a jail cell being able to wiggle my toes and feel my body again but now no chance no i wouldn't change uh what we have together for anything i my journey might end up not being able to breathe speak or swallow because i've got an ever-changing injury but right now that forces me to be present i'm present here talking to you wonderful people on the others you know in australia hopefully sharing some perspective and some these bombs and a decent shit yourself story if it if it helps dave we um we had rebel wilson on here and she she told a story about shitting herself in daylight on

someone's lawn in hollywood in the middle of the day she just had to go onto someone's front like and take a shit yeah perfect i mean you ain't human unless you shat yourself right we we often say that i um i have no doubt if you if you've proven anything that you will be able to achieve everything you've just said that you're aiming to do and you're working towards and i truly cannot thank you enough for coming on today the perspective you've provided has been absolutely wonderful you've been an absolute joy to talk to and i just yeah i i'm really chuffed that we got the chance to speak to you yeah for anyone listening in australia right now you can stream the documentary the boy who lived on binge is where you can access it right now i mean that

might change in the future and you can get david's book the boy who lived anywhere that you can get books i went through a very very hard journey telling that story again and going to a very part of myself and uh it would be nice if that it was received and sold a bit better because you don't make any money in in the literary world unless people actually buy the physical book so the act of holding a book and a pen has been taken away from me and trust me sitting on a nice like damp day with a book in front of a fire i was like the joy to turn a page and hold that book i can't even hold my own so yeah go out there read buy a book and put your bloody phones down can i Let me ask you this, and this is for listeners as well.

I'm a big audio book girl. As the person who created the book and also voiced it, do you also get, you know, are you also supporting someone through listening to an audio book? It's less in audio. Yeah, it's a lot less. Okay. But, you know, the music stream has fucked all the music artists.

You get like a 0.00% you know what I mean? So Keish, now is not the time to tell David that you listen to his book. No one listen. Everyone just get the physical copy if you're able to. But listen, if someone gets something from it, then it's done its job. It's not my book anymore. It belongs to the reader. Like all great art, it's for the person viewing it, right?

You're wonderful. Thank you so much, Dave. No worries. Thank you, ladies. You have a great day. And yeah, enjoy life with your toes and hold those dear in your life. I hope life is kind to you and everyone you love. That's the best way to say it.

We'll be right back.