Interview: Dennis Madalone

How did you get into stunt doubling?

Well, I was a kid growing up in New Jersey and I use

to jump off my bed and off the roof and down the steps and my parents thought that there was something wrong with e but I guess I just had that in me as a little kid. After high chool I came out here to LA with some friends and was lucky enough to meet a famous stuntman, who trained me and a year and a half later I was running shows at Universal Studios, so it happened kind of fast.

Was it easy crossing over from being a stunt double to being a stunt coordinator?

It happened fast. I was a stunt double one week and suddenly a week later I’m running shows at Universal, 20 years old, which is unheard of, so it happened fast, but in a way it was meant to be because when I was doing my stunts in Jersey I use to coordinate it myself so I did have that knowledge and confidence and I think it won over the producers.

How did you get into working for Star Trek?

A friend of mine, a director, brought me over to do the fourth episode of the first season of The Next Generation and he already had three or four stunt coordinators because it was the director’s prerogative, who ever directed brought over a coordinator, so the producers wouldn’t commit anyone. So I did an episode then two shows later my friend directed another episode so I went over and did another one too and suddenly around the 7th or 8th episode the unit manager, Sam Freedle, rang me up and said “do you want to run the stunts for a show?” and I said “is my friend directing still?” and he said “no but we want to coordinate for another director” and then the producer, David Livingston, a week later, asked if I wanted to do the whole season and then it went on for 13 years and 387 episodes.

  What was it like working on the same

  show for so long?

  It was amazing. While I was doing The

  Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and

  Voyager I kept doing feature films and

  movie-of-the-weeks so I stayed really

  busy. It was pretty amazing to be at

  Paramount Studios for 13 years. But it’s

  funny, that’s how the movie business

  works, you go to one interview and it could

  launch into a 40 year career.

  What was it like with the heavy makeup

  for some of the roles you played on Star Trek?

Well I loved it in the beginning but after nearly 14 years of Klingons and Borg it was so much. And I used a great team of stuntmen and we had a great time putting on this makeup and it was awesome that we could be in so many episodes because the audience never knew who we were. It was a long day and a hard day when we were in makeup but it was rewarding too when you take it off and you’ve put in 15 hours work and it’s just fun to be part of the history of playing all these great aliens.