By Gene Ching
Long in the wake of his double-barreled blockbuster Sherlock Holmes films, Director Guy Ritchie returning to the franchise for the small screen with Young Sherlock. The eight-episode first season premiered in March 2026 on Amazon Prime and immediately secured a place in their Top Ten for weeks. Young Sherlock is the creation story for the world famous detective, imagining a teenage Holmes at Oxford. Assuming the role of Sherlock is Hero Fiennes Tiffin, who some might remember as playing the Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), the young version of Lord Voldemort, played by Tiffen’s uncle, Ralph Fiennes.
However, it’s another character that caught the attention of KungFuMagazine.com. Ritchie’s previous Sherlock Holmes films captured over a $1 billion and earned Robert Downey Jr a Golden Globe for Best Actor. Downey brought his passion for Wing Chun Kung Fu into the role, and that left an indelible mark on Ritchie’s interpretations of Holmes. The overarching mystery driving the first season of Young Sherlock surrounds an elusive Chinese Princess named Gulun Shou’an, played by Zine Tseng. And this princess knows Kung Fu.
Publisher Gene Ching chatted with David Forman, Stunt Coordinator for Young Sherlock, about bringing Kung Fu into the show, as well as his longstanding career as a stunt coordinator and fight arranger.
GC: When Guy Ritchie said that there was going to be a Kung Fu Princess in Young Sherlock, what were your initial thoughts on that?
DF: East meets West. I thought, well, that's gonna be fun. You know, we got a little bit of Eastern-style action with Western-style action, so I thought that was a pretty cool mix. I was very excited to work with Adam Brashaw, who was the fight coordinator on the show. He has a certain style with his fight choreography and his editing style. It’s very stylized.
With my past history of fight choreography, like Batman Begins (2005) and it was good to work with someone else. I used to fight choreograph, so it was nice to be the stunt coordinator and supervisor and help Adam put everything together and give him everything that he wanted to make it happen.
My position was slightly different on this show as I wasn't the fighter arranger. I was the supervising stunt coordinator. So my job was to make sure everyone did their training, their planning, and that all departments came together, to make sure that Adam had everything he needed in terms of rehearsal time, props. And always the battle is to work out how much screen time, we have to accomplish the one minute to two-minute sequences.
It was fun working with Adam, and with Haruka [Oshima], who doubled Zine. She came from Japan, so it was a different element. There were different elements to this Sherlock than other shows that I'd done. But great fun.
And the fights were really interesting, you know? The bandit fight, the opening fight. It was a good opening sequence of a carriage chase, a real Western-style opening. And then we had the kidnapping of the princess, and then the horse sequence with the bandits being all shot off the carriages, off the horses. And then we got into the stylized fight, Adam's stylized fight. That was a good opening number for episode one. It set the bar.
Did you enjoy the sequence?
GC: Absolutely. I'm a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and then to have that whole Kung Fu Princess angle just spoke to me very, very directly. And here, I gotta show you something. [lifts up an Emei piercer] I'm actually working on an article with Emei piercers which you guys featured in some fight scenes.
DF: Yeah!
GC: I must give you some props because when that Kung Fu angle started to come up, I started thinking about Guy Ritchie's previous Sherlock Holmes (2009) with Robert Downey, where it got like really kind of kung fu-y, you know, given Robert Downey and his personality. It was just a lot for Sherlock. And you showed a lot of restraint. The way that Young Sherlock came together, Kung Fu was very well represented, but it didn't overwhelm, you know? I thought that was good. Was there intentionality behind that?
DF: Well, don't forget, we're going back to the beginning story, aren't we? This is the birth of young Sherlock Holmes. So Sherlock's not a fighter yet. He has no skill base. And we haven't really shown that in the show, so he still has yet to progress into that Downey Jr. character with the Wing Chun. So is to come in the future. And as the shows and the episodes move on, and the storyline moves on, I'm sure we'll get into more training with Sherlock and his Wing Chun. I look forward to seeing that materialize.
We did a little training sequence with Sherlock, which we shot as a sunset sequence, but it actually didn't make the cut. That just showed, the princess, Zine, teaching Sherlock how to fight.
GC: Oh, really?
DF: Yeah, but they didn't end up in the storyline, for whatever reasons. They decided that they didn't want to present it too early. So maybe Season 2 will show a bit of that training.
And where he gets that training from will be interesting, because the princess isn't there anymore. So, where will he get his training from now? That will be down to Mr. Parkhill [Matthew Parkhill is the writer and creator of Young Sherlock]. We'll see what he comes up with. That'll be very interesting.
GC: Sherlock Holmes triggered this revitalization of Bartitsu, which was a martial art that was prevalent at the time. And of course, Downey is a Wing Chun guy, so his take was as a Wing Chunner. Even in Iron Man, you see his Wing Chun.
DF: Yes.
GC: I'm curious if you'll go that direction as the show progresses. It hasn't been greenlit for Season 2 yet, has it?
DF: They're writing and they're talking, so it hasn't been officially greenlit, I don't think. But there's definitely lots of rumors going around that, you know, it was a very successful show with Amazon Prime.
GC: You're still in the top 10.
DF: So, I see no reason why it shouldn't have another season. Especially, as the chemistry was so good between all the actors – Moriarty [Dónal Finn], Sherlock, and Silas [Joseph Fiennes], his father. Did you like that sequence at the end?
GC: Oh, absolutely. It was all very well played out. There was closure, but there was enough of a cliffhanger that I'm into Season 2 when it comes out, you know?
DF: Yes, of course. Yeah.
I mean, as for the fights, you know, there was Adam Brashaw. We had the opening bandit fight, then we moved into the bedroom sequence, which, was very well choreographed by Adam as well, and then we moved into, the ironmongery, the stillwork fight with her best friend from China. So we had to fight really hard to get these pieces - memorable on screen - because there's always a battle with how much screen time you're going get with your action, you know, because, obviously, drama takes the forefront of the storyline. And action can always be cut down. So, so we had to fight very hard to get our story across. And I think, I think we managed it. I very much like the, the metalwork ironmongery sequence. I thought that was a very well put together sequence.
GC: I gotta tell you, it was the Emei Piercers that really got me, because just by coincidence, I have this on my desk because I'm working on a piece about these. One of the things that impressed me was the innovative use of them. These are always used in pairs in modern day practice, and they always do this spinny thing. In Young Sherlock, you didn't do either, which I thought was kind of cool. It made it more real, in a way.
DF: This was a hidden tool, a hidden weapon that she would just bring out occasionally when she needed to assassinate someone. And she also had her hairpins as well. Her little darts. I think it's very ingenious for us to hide her weaponry in her hair.
And his little spinning tool, which Adam found online. And then we had to present that to, obviously, the writer and director, and go, ‘What do you think? Do you like this tool as a weapon? Do you think it's pretty cool? Will it work for you?’ So, there's hoops. There's lots of hoops to go through to get the green light to use these props. But yeah, that worked out very well. She also killed the professor with it as well, didn't she? I think it was used at least three times in the show: the bedroom fight, the killing of the professor, and there was probably, one other occasion where we used it.
GC: Yeah, it was fresh. Hairpins are kind of cliche.
DF: Yeah.
GC: Every woman assassin does hairpins, right? I mean, even in Enter the Dragon (1973) we see hairpin darts.
DF: Yes.
GC: But Emei Piercers is kind of a level deeper, which was a nice nod to the authenticity.
DF: I gotta give the credit to Adam on that.
GC: I was researching your background, and I saw that you were the bear in the John West Salmon ad? That just totally blew up with our readership. Our readers were going nuts about that. Did you think that was going to go as viral as it did when you did it?
DF: No, I mean back in the day, adverts were very highly prized in the UK. You know, you had British Telecom, you had Guinness. There was a lot of money spent on adverts back in the 2000s. In the 90s and the 2000s, I think the UK was looked at as a very highly prized, commercial directing crew. The people loved the creativity coming out of the UK for commercials. And so, I was approached, because I'd done a lot of bear work with Jim Henson.
I spent 10 years with Jim Henson, doing Ninja Turtles, and The Never Ending Story and Flintstones, and then I played many a bear. So, I was sort of the bear man.
GC: I saw the logo on your website with the bear.
DF: Yeah, so I played panda bears, and polar bears, and brown bears, and so when they had this commercial, and they wanted to do this fighting bear for John West Salmon. I just took up the challenge, and I must say, it was a challenge. It was one of the hardest costume creature work parts I'd ever played because it was shot as a doco-style piece. So it's all in one, you know, and I had to do it more than 20 times as a full piece, as a full master, because it was shot wide. It was very challenging, but it made the grade, I think, and it's became quite an iconic commercial. But yeah, that's one of the challenges in my life that I will never forget, and it's still there. People still love it. And I played all the bears in that commercial, because they did split screen, so I played all the bears in that commercial.
Yeah, and then I use the Kung Fu back kick. I remember doing the Muhammad Ali shuffle, and then the back kick on the fisherman. I came up with that. That was a very funny little movement I made with the bear. But yeah, that was a tough job, and I hope everyone really enjoys it.
GC: Oh, it's still a classic. I mean, as soon as I saw it on your website, I was like, oh my god, I remember that.
DF: Yeah. I've hung up my bear now. I don't do bear work anymore.
GC: And you were Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). You’ve done a lot of work fighting in costumes. How was that? I mean, those are bulky costumes, right?
DF: Ninja Turtle was a crazy time in my life. I just had a son, Jack, he was a year old. And I'd just done a film called Nuns on the Run (1990), and then I got a phone call from Henson's going, ‘Do you want to have a meet? We'd like to talk to you about something.’ And then I went in, and they showed me this comic book, and I looked at it and I went, ‘Oh, this is interesting. What is it?’ Because they're Ninja Turtles, I've never heard of them, you know? So I auditioned for the part with Steve Barron from Limelight Productions, the producer. And yeah, I got the job.
I was the only UK performer. They wanted someone from the UK so they could start testing the costume, and start molding it, and they needed someone very close to the UK who could help with the test films and to help with the design of the costume, to make sure that they would all work well and move well for the other turtles. So I was brought on board early, to get that all done for everyone. But yeah, what an adventure that was.
We shot that in North Carolina. I think it was a 10-week shoot. I think the budget was tiny, but the technology was new for Jim Henson. Like 360 radio control, well, computer control, really. And it was the first time that they created this, so there was lots of hiccups. But they managed to get through it.
It just married up the performance for me, the performer in the costume with the puppeteer. He would be in sync with me, with dialogue, so he would be puppeteering through his hand which then relayed to the computer, so all his movements were set on the computer, and then he would be doing that with me. I would marry up with my puppeteer, with all these servos and technology that was in the head. It was a fascinating time.
It was hard work. The costume weighed a huge amount, with the batteries in the shell and all the servers in the head. But we got through it.
GC: I imagine that's super challenging, dealing with not only the bulkiness of the costume, but the lack of vision in the costume.
DF: Yeah, just like bear work, or any creature work, you have no vision. You start with a tiny little bit of vision through the crack. But then once you're moving, you can't focus, so you have to know all your surroundings. You have to work it all out before you start your action. So yeah. It is like blind work in these costumes. Besides the heat and the sweat, you're blind, you're hot, you've got servos going in your head, you've got your puppeteer in your ear, you've got the director trying to direct you. You've got people pushing you and pulling you. It is an interesting job, being a creature actor. I think a lot of actors have gone on to do things in Star Wars and stuff like that, so I'm sure they can say the same stories that I've got. Yeah, that it's hot, sweaty, hard, hard work.
But you have to have a good mind. You've got to have a very calm mind to be able to cope inside these costumes, yeah.
You could have been a Ninja Turtle as well.
GC: [laughs] Oh, I don't know about that. Actually, where I'm from is where Ernie Reyes Jr. is from, the Silicon Valley in California.
DF: He's a talented, talented young man, yeah.
GC: Definitely. His father still runs his martial arts school. I last saw their demonstration a few years before the pandemic.
DF: Yeah, that's awesome.
GC: He’s still incredibly strong.
A lot of our readership would love to do what you have done with your life - going into acting, going to stunt work, and then going to fight choreography. What advice might you give to them in terms of how to pursue a career akin to yours? I mean, you’ve had such a unique career…
DF: Yeah, I mean, don't forget, it's a period of time, isn't it?
I worked for Jim Henson while they were still being creative and developing new techniques and new technology. And so that technology, from puppeteering with cables, and then they've gone to remote controls, and then they've gone to computers. That's advanced now. The creature work died off, and so then I had to move. I had to reinvent myself.
Hence, I went into fight choreography, and then I went into assisting coordinating, and then coordinating. I think for any advice for anyone is that if it's not working for you, just keep reinventing yourself. Keep trying to find avenues that you can you feel that you can give something to, and just reinvent yourself, you know? If things aren't working, just reinvent yourself. You know, you have to keep pushing hard.
And now the technology, we've moved on to motion capture, we've moved now into AI. The world is a different place now to the 80s, 90s, so I feel honored that I've seen all those decades - different decades - and how the industry's progressed from stop motion all the way through to where we are now, with the technology that we use now with AI.
And we won't be able to hold back on that technology. So anyone now that wants to do the work that I'd done, I think you just need to move into the into the present time. And you have to you have to be up, up-to-date, you know? You have to be up-to-date with your technology. Look at what, they did with Lord of the Rings. Look what they did with Planet of the Apes. It's just things just advance, don't they? Like, in everything.
Now we've gone to the moon. They’ve just gone around the moon, and now they'll land on the moon next year, and technology will just keep moving on. You've just got to keep up.
GC: A lot of my martial arts friends that are working in the industry are doing mocap now. I'm curious, with AI, since you brought it up. How is that affecting, or how do you foresee it affecting the stunt industry? I imagine a lot of your job is trying to keep people safe in stunts, and now we can just get AI to do it. Do you think there'll be much of an impact for that?
DF: Well, there has been, over the last two decades. I've seen the advancement of technology and visual effects, and what they can do. You know visual effects couldn't do bears. They couldn't do hair. Now they can do hair. They've moved on so, so much.
GC: I remember when I watched them flip cars and such in movies from the 90s and now it’s all CGI, right?
DF: Yeah, it's not for me. I'm a very real, real action guy. You know, The Last Samurai (2003) is an example. I mean, that was a great film, and it was all action. There was hardly any visual effects in it, you know, it was all real. That's what I like to portray when I do my shows. When I work on a show, I like things to be real. I'm not really that interested in blue screen, green screen. I'm not imagining cars flipping over the top of you and diving out of the way. It's not real for me, you know, I'm just… I'm a little bit old school. Because I because I come from that period, you know, I come from the 80s, 90s, 2000s, early 2000s. So that's still inbred in me, and when I do action, I like it to be real.
It's like falling off the cliff on the end of Young Sherlock. They discussed about doing it digitally, and I said, ‘No, we can do this for real. Why don't we do this for real?’ You know, so I had to fight quite hard to get that. So it is a battle. It is a battle to keep real stunts going, and we will lose it eventually. Why would you set a man on fire when visual can do it for you? And the audiences now don't really know the difference between what's real, and what's digital. Because if they've been brought up in that, if they've been brought up on that tech, and they don't know past. They don't know real stunts. I mean, I'm sure that's why Marvel and all those shows do so well, because young people just see that. All they see is visual films, don't they? They see a lot of films, but they don't see those real shows anymore.
It is very different. I'm very happy and pleased that I've actually gone through all these, that I started my career in the 80s. And I'm 65 now, you know, so I'm of an age where I won't be doing this forever. But I'm pleased. I'd like to be involved in another Ninja Turtles. I'd love it if they did a real hardcore version of Ninja Turtles, and it would be amazing to be involved in it, whether it's consultancy, whatever. It would just be great to put your footprint back onto something, with the new technologies they have and be involved in that.
But, yeah, I'm still into real action. I still love real action.
GC: I totally hear what you're saying. For me, one of my big issues is with digital blood. I mean, in the old days, where they would run a pipe through, and people would spurt blood, there was an authenticity to it. And just from a technical standpoint, when you watch a scene like that, you know they had to hit it, because if they didn't, then they had to clean everybody up and do it all over again, and what a mess.
DF: Yeah.
GC: There's just something about when actors are doing a fight scene, and it's real spurting blood. The reaction's far more authentic. CGI blood, it looks like it's added in.
I still long for those old days where, you know, you talk about lighting people on fire. I mean some of the fire effects are convincing, but you look back in the 80s films, even just pyro, the explosions, and now I have so much respect for that, for what was. Back then, it was just another explosion on film, but now I look at it, and it's like, ‘Oh my god, that's a huge explosion, and that's a real.’ It just hits differently, right?
DF: There was a massive explosion on Daylight (1996) when they blew up the tunnel. That was Kit West [Special Effects Supervisor]. That is very impressive, and there was a lot of fuel that went in there.
But yeah, it's amazing for it to be real. I mean, we did a fire job on Young Sherlock. We burnt a couple of police, all the policemen there. And that was real. That was great. It was good fun. It's great for everyone. You know, what's great for everyone is to see real things, like Star Wars. Instead of seeing a green ball and just imagine that's this is the character, you know, to bring on puppets and muppets and creatures and performers on set. Just for the actors, for everyone, it's just real, you know? You can't beat that. You really can't. It must be so hard for actors to imagine all the time. You've got digital things moving around you, and you just have to follow your eyelines, and just imagine what they are, without physically seeing them for real.
It's like Daylight. Do you remember I did the stunt on Daylight with Stallone? They're having an altercation in the car where he drops the diamonds, and the car goes out of control, and the car comes up on the pipe ramp, and then crashes into the police box. And I'm the policeman there. I'm the guard. And so as the car was coming at me at 55 miles an hour, I dive alongside the car. And you see my body go underneath the car as it comes past me and crashes into the box.
And it was a real stunt. A hairy stunt and a real stunt. And the director came up to me after, goes, ‘Dave, that was amazing, but you know what? Everyone's gonna think that's digital.’
Now, all we've got to do is just digitally impose me now, diving under that car. So, I do feel sorry for stunt people that don't have the opportunity to do real stunts. I do feel a little bit sorry for these very talented physical performers who actually might never fall off a 100-foot building, might never be fully set on fire, might never drive a car into water, never jump off a moving train, it's just those days are sort of gone.
And it's now becoming a reference world, isn't it? But hey, you know, each to their own. I'm sure those guys, those new guys and that new generation, will have fun whatever they do. But yeah, inspiration for other stunt people, other creature performers. As I said, you just need to go with what today's technology is, and just don't fight it - go with it - because that is the world we live in.
Yeah, and it's the future.
Author:
Young Sherlock is available on Amazon Prime Video. To learn more about David Forman, visit his website.
Gene Ching is the Publisher of KungFuMagazine.com and the author of Shaolin Trips.
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