Secrets of The Cutting Edge—Including How They Pulled Off That Stunt

1. Since neither Moira Kelly (Kate Mosley, the talented Olympic pairs skater who had a history of being, um, difficult to work with) nor costar D.B. Sweeney (arrogant hockey player Doug Dorsey, whose head injury sidelined his NHL dreams) were skilled skaters—"I had actually only been on the ice twice," Kelly admitted to E! News—they were sent to New York City for a three-month bootcamp. 

And the training truly helped the two break the ice. "For three months, we skated almost every day together, and I would stay and play hockey," Sweeney relayed in a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly. "It let us get to know each other in a different way than a normal rehearsal process, and it was very similar to what the characters go through in the movie. I think it was just a very natural and organic way to build a history for the characters."

2. Though it’s worth noting that the two didn’t suddenly make the leap to gold medal-worthy figure skaters. British skating choreographer Robin Cousins—who nabbed gold at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics—tapped U.S. figure skating medalist Sharon Carz and pairs skater John Denton to jump in. 

At the time, Denton was in Boston "trying to figure out what to do" after his partner quit suddenly. "I got a phone call from Robin, who said, 'How would you like to be in a movie? I want you to fly out and meet [director] Paul Michael Glaser,'" he recounted to Yahoo Entertainment in 2018. "I'm like, 'From Starsky & Hutch?!' He said, 'Yeah. I’ve got a first-class ticket for you to be in Toronto tomorrow. Can you make it?' I said, 'Absolutely.'"

3. But much like Kate and Doug, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for the two professionals. "John and I were competitors," Carz noted to Yahoo. "It was totally taboo." The two engaged in a bit of a power struggle, acknowledged Denton, who told the outlet, "In some ways, Sharon and I were like oil and water, for sure."

So, no, it wasn’t all that difficult for them to believably play adversaries. "We were basically fighting anyway, so it wasn’t that hard to go there," Carz shared. Add in 17-hour days ("We’d be the first ones on the van in the morning to go to the set, then we’d be in hair and makeup for two hours, and then they would bring in the actual actors and start with them") and, by the end of filming, "John and I were kind of getting sick of each other," she added.

Still, "He and I later ended up competing together for a season."

4. One move they never attempted IRL: The movie-championship-wining Pamchenko, a move Carz dubbed "crazy impossible and totally illegal in amateur competition."

Agreed Denton, "The idea of the Pamchenko is a girl being swung in a circle, then going up and spinning and then the boy catching her and putting her down. But that’s not physics! You can’t swing somebody in a circle and then all of a sudden get them up in the air and change your trajectory."

5. Thanks to the magic of filmmaking, though, they gave it a whirl. "So the Pamchenko is three items cut into one: It starts out as a triple twist takeoff, which they did part of with an adagio team, and part of it with a doll," Carz detailed to Yahoo, noting that the day after the shoot, the other figure skater’s face "was like blown up from doing it over and over. I was told that you’re not supposed to do it more than three times."

For the next part of the twist, Carz continued, "It cuts to me on a trampoline that was anchored on the ice, doing a quad at a back angle, not in skates. They had the stunt coordinator working with me on that one, because I had to jump backward, pull in, stay in, and land spinning as they throw a mat underneath me on the trampoline."

For the grand finale, "when you see the catch and her being put back down on the ice, that was Sharon and I," said Denton, adding that because she was "tiny" he "could get her up so high that her blades would be above my head."

6. Surprisingly, though, that wasn’t the move that left Kelly with a broken foot. During the first week of filming, the actress was testing out her newfound skills. "So she landed funny on a jump, and she broke her leg,” Sweeney recounted to EW. "And that was the first time I really got nervous—I was hoping they could film her, and I could hide in the background. But now, a lot of it was going to be me with her stunt double."

As a result, though, "If you skate with an Olympic-level skater, they make you so much better because you're skating behind them, and you're trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It's like having the world's greatest training wheels. So, Sharon was able to make me look a lot better than I would have looked skating by myself."

8. Of course, Kelly wasn’t the only one to land on thin ice. Carz took a slap shot to the leg while filming Doug and Kate’s one-on-one hockey match, Denton suffered a "back injury where my latissimus muscle detached off of my spine a little bit," after aggressively throwing Carz in the air for a triple twist move and a $20,000 camera took a shot to the lens.

"They wanted to get a shot with our feet spinning in the air," detailed Carz, "and they’re having us do jumps right next to the camera."

Even Sweeney’s pal—three-time Stanley Cup champion Chris Chelios, who had a small part as one of the German hockey players—noted the strain of the long hours on the ice. After one five-hour shoot, Sweeney recounted to EW, "He was like, 'I'm never on skates this long in my life.'"

9. Though Carz bore a striking resemblance to Kelly—"Moira and I looked so much alike that people called us each other’s names when we were on the set," she told Yahoo—her costume included a few assets: A wig and a set of fake boobs. Well, sets, Carz telling Yahoo, "On a daily basis, I pulled [the falsies] out of my outfit and threw them to somebody in the crowd at the end of the day."

As for Denton, "I had about three to four hours in the makeup chair," he told Yahoo, "where they’d put on a fake forehead, pull my hairline up and color my hair." He also had prosthetic chin applied, said Carz, "and he used to take it off and stick it on the wall when we were done on set."

10. While Sweeney enjoyed shooting the hockey scenes, asked to name his top filming moment, he coughed up a surprising answer.

"I think my favorite scene to shoot was the scene with Moira and I where we're just about to go on, and I get sick to my stomach," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I just thought it was such a funny setup and such a well-written script, and I thought Moira was just so good in that scene. All the scenes I had with Moira were fun. I've been really lucky with actors I've worked with in my career, but really, Moira was the best."

11. Kelly would also give her costar a perfect 10. Sharing a Cutting Edge throwback to her Instagram feed in 2020, The West Wing alum called it "one of my favorite films I’ve ever worked on."

IRL, there were no cracks in their relationship. "He's such a good guy," she detailed to E! News. "He's very supportive and very much like the big brother. I loved joking around with him." 

You could say they might not be right for anyone else. "He's the only guy, too, that I can really be sarcastic with and he could take it," Moria continued. "And he can give it back just as much, so it's good. It's a nice chemistry that we have. 

12. Still, they both iced out an offer to reprise their roles in a sequel. "She and I made a deal that we wouldn't do it without the other one," Sweeney explained to Entertainment Weekly. "It was easy to stick to, because the money was so insultingly low and the script was so bad. I just thought it was unfortunate that they'd do that."

But they did partner up once more. "She did me the great honor of playing a part in Two Tickets to Paradise, which I directed in 2007," he added. "We've stayed friends through the years, and I have a lot of admiration for her."