\u201cI think every athlete finds it tough and confronting to go from having your life focused on training and competing and the next big event, and then it\u2019s like, \u2018what\u2019s next?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The answer, when it came, was unexpected \u2013 and cinematic. <\/p>\n
Weeks after stepping away from the sport, Jones-Yaxley was asked to double for Charlize Theron in the whitewater kayaking scenes in the action movie Apex, which was released on Netflix on Friday. <\/p>\n
The message arrived out of the blue in November 2024, just as the Olympic silver medallist was preparing to marry her partner Brenden Yaxley. A friend working in safety co-ordination on film sets wanted to know if she\u2019d be interested in being a stunt double. Jones-Yaxley readily agreed, but she wasn\u2019t convinced it was actually going to come off. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those texts where you\u2019re thinking, \u2018this is probably not going to happen\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until weeks later, as she was being helicoptered into a remote river on the South Island\u2019s West Coast, that it sank in \u201cthis is actually happening\u201d.<\/p>\n
For an athlete navigating the loss of structure and identity that comes with retirement, the timing could not have been better.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get this opportunity and to do something that felt exciting and didn\u2019t feel like work, and had elements of having to perform and learning new things, it was right up my alley,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t something that I ever saw coming, but it has definitely helped give me something to focus on, and reinforce that life goes on after sport. And actually, if I was still training fulltime, I would never have been able to take up this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlize Theron plays “a grieving woman seeking solace in the wilderness” in Apex. Photo \/ 2026 Netflix, Inc.<\/p>\n
While much of the film was shot in and around the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, some of the whitewater scenes were filmed on rivers around Hokitika, Haast and W\u0101naka \u2013 the kind of wild, technical rivers Jones-Yaxley had spent a lifetime mastering.<\/p>\n
Over 10 days in January 2025, she and fellow Kiwi paddler River Mutton, an extreme kayaking specialist, worked through a series of demanding river sequences. The shoot later shifted to Australia, where filming continued on location and at Penrith Whitewater Stadium \u2013 a venue Jones-Yaxley had returned to year after year across her career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I must have competed there every year for about 20 years,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
While a movie set is a world away from competitive canoe slalom, the demands were strangely familiar: precision, courage and performance under pressure.<\/p>\n
Jones-Yaxley is careful not to give too much away, but the film\u2019s promotional material describes the story as \u201ca grieving woman who seeks solace in the wilderness, only to become ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a serial killer\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was still an acting component, so it was kind of interesting to apply some things that I\u2019d learned from sport performance into the movie world,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike in a chase scene, you\u2019d have to paddle and act like you\u2019re being chased by somebody. So your nice kayaking technique goes out the window and you\u2019re kind of trying to put yourself in the space where you\u2019re genuinely trying to paddle for your life and that looks a lot different to doing a really nice slalom run or paddling down a river normally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working alongside Theron added to the experience. With the stunt work, the Kiwi paddler provided the Hollywood actor with guidance and advice on how to deal with sections of whitewater.<\/p>\n
Theron performed many of her own action scenes in the film, including scaling rock faces without ropes, and much of the publicity around Apex has focused on the physical demands of the role and her hands-on approach to the action.<\/p>\n
But Theron has been equally clear about the role of the stunt team behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people say, \u2018she does all her stunts\u2019, I\u2019m like, there\u2019s an incredible group of people I\u2019m so dependent on, and I couldn\u2019t have this performance without them. I\u2019ve landed on: I do action, they do stunts,\u201d Theron said in official Netflix publicity material.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything you see of me going down a waterfall or some of the really dangerous rapids in nature, where we didn\u2019t know if there was a rock underneath, I had two incredible women, River Mutton and Luuka Jones, doing that for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had world-class, Olympic level kayakers doing a lot of my kayaking. I thought I\u2019d be great at kayaking because I\u2019m so comfortable in the water and I\u2019m a very strong swimmer, but I really struggled with the kayaking, so I was very grateful to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones-Yaxley describes Theron as \u201cbadass\u201d.<\/p>\n
Luuka Jones competing in the kayak cross event at the Paris Olympics. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a bit of coaching in terms of the whitewater side of things, and I was super impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, she\u2019d come off a huge stint of climbing in the Blue Mountains and her fingers are raw and then she\u2019s kind of just straight into kayaking on the white water, which is notoriously difficult for anybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wanted to get things right and wanted to look like a legitimate kayaker, she can watch someone and just kind of emulate their style and technique and it was really interesting to observe. And just really down to earth and was just kind of a perfectionist and a performer.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the work carried echoes of elite sport, the conditions did not.<\/p>\n
Jones-Yaxley, who spent much of her career operating on tight high-performance budgets, found herself in a very different environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never had a hot tent on the side of the river,\u201d she says. \u201cIt felt pretty bougie, we were well looked after.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proof, perhaps, that life after sport can take unexpected turns \u2013 and sometimes, it even comes with an IMDb credit.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think every athlete finds it tough and confronting to go from having your life focused on training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[806,430,200987,49781,8609,156,4223,49782,204216,194,38692,204215,111,139,69,46449,205,52039,200988],"class_list":["post-395119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-as","tag-celebrities","tag-charlize","tag-dana","tag-double","tag-entertainment","tag-hollywood","tag-johannsen","tag-jonesyaxley","tag-kiwi","tag-lands","tag-luuka","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-olympian","tag-role","tag-stunt","tag-theron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}