Ngāpuhi superwoman Dayna Grant is a stuntwoman in the new movie, Wonder Woman 1984, which has been nominated for stunt performances in this year's Screen Actors Guild Awards to be held next month.
Grant said the nomination is a result of a lot of hard work given the impact of Covid-19 on the film industry in Hollywood.
"Just proud I guess that the stunt team have been acknowledged for all the hard work that we did on it," she says.
The DC Comics film is in the same category as DA 5 Bloods, Mulan, News of the World and The Trial of the Chicago 7 for outstanding action performance by a stunt ensemble in a motion picture.
Although this isn't the first time Grant has experienced success in her 25-year career as a stunt performer, she says being a multi-award winner (SAG & Artemis winner, Taurus nominee) gives her the mana and motivation to keep going.
The stunt performances Grant delivered were filmed over six months in the UK, Spain and Canary Islands. She was part of the older Amazons when the lead-character Diana Prince was only a girl who took part in an athletic event on the fictional
A young Diana Prince participates in an athletic event on the fictional island of Themyscira. Most of the work was done riding a horse, which is one of her greatest talents, knowing how to create choreography that's suited to the film.
"The stunts were huge. We were busy, we were running on high poles."
She appears in the opening scene during the competition showing off her moves on the horse.
Since the screening of Wonder Woman 1984, Grant has worked on a couple of New Zealand films because she can't travel back to Hollywood during the pandemic.