Daniel Radcliffe is making a documentary on his good friend and former Harry Potter stunt double David Holmes, who was left paralysed following an accident on the set of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Daniel Radcliffe’s documentary details
The HBO documentary, David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived, will examine the couple’s friendship, as well as David’s “spirit of resilience” as she dealt with the life changing injury. The official synopsis reads: “David Holmes, a prodigious teenage gymnast from Essex, England, who is selected to play Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the first Harry Potter film, when Daniel is just 11.
“Over the next ten years, the two form an inextricable bond, but on the penultimate film a tragic accident on set leaves David paralysed with a debilitating spinal injury, turning his world upside down. As Daniel and his closest stunt colleagues rally to support David and his family in their moment of need, it is David’s extraordinary spirit of resilience that becomes their greatest source of strength and inspiration.”
The documentary will include personal footage as well as interviews with friends, family and the former Harry Potter crew from over the last decade. The documentary will premiere in the US on Max on Wednesday 15 November, while it will be available on Sky and NOW from 18 November in the UK.
What Daniel Radcliffe has said about David Holmes
Daniel hosted a charity auction in 2009 to raise money for David’s medical bills, and has opened up about their friendship on several occasions. Speaking about David back in 2014, he told The Mirror: “I’ve got a relationship that goes back many, many years with Dave. And I would hate for people to just see me and Dave and go, ‘Oh, there’s Daniel Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair’ because I would never, even for a moment, want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.”
The pair also launched a podcast back in 2020, Cunning Stunts, where they discussed stunt performers. At the time, Daniel said: “I think there’s a myth around stuntmen that they are just superhuman in some way.
“When the public sees something painful or horrible, they think it was a visual effect or that there’s some clever, safe way of doing it. Often that’s not the case. There’s no way of faking, for example, falling downstairs. When you get hit by a car, you’re still getting hit by a car, even if it’s going slower than it would. They find the safest way of doing it, but it can still hurt.”
How did Harry Potter stunt double David Holmes get paralysed?
David broke his neck while performing a stunt on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, leaving him paralysed from the chest down. The stunt involved David being slammed into a wall by being pulled backwards by a high-strength, replicating the effects of an explosion. At the time, his family posted on his Facebook page, writing: “David wants to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and wishes. And don't worry... the stunt-runt will be back."
David reflected on his injuries at the time, telling The Mirror: “I hit the wall and then landed on the crash mat underneath. My stunt coordinator grabbed my hand and said, ‘Squeeze my fingers’. I could move my arm to grab his hand but I couldn’t squeeze his fingers. I looked into his eyes and that’s when I realised what happened was major.”
He added: “I remember slipping in and out of consciousness because of the pain levels. I’d broken a bone before, so recognising that weird feeling across my whole body from my fingertips right down to my toes, I knew I had really done some damage.”
© Warner BrosAfter spending six months in hospital, he added that it took a great deal of patience on the road to recovery. He said: “I have gone from being able to stand on my hands for half an hour at a time and then all of a sudden I can’t sit up in bed. At the first physio lesson they sit you up, put a foam cushion behind you and you are just struggling to find your balance. I thought, ‘oh my God, I can’t even sit up straight.’”
