Will Smith is lucky to be alive.<\/p>\n
The Oscar winner recounted a frightening experience while filming his new National Geographic series, Pole to Pole, streaming now on Disney+. During an appearance with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, the 57-year-old revealed the harrowing experience happened when he and his guide went scuba diving in the North Pole.<\/p>\n
It’s a gigantic undertaking under extremely freezing conditions. That, in and of itself, would give most people pause to begin with. But Smith took the plunge anyway, and immediately things went awry.<\/p>\n
‘Abort dive! Abort dive!’<\/p>\n
“So, you go under the ice, and the ice can be up to 10 feet thick. So, we’re under, we went out about 40 yards away,” Smith explained.<\/p>\n
He called it “an upside-down ice mountain range” once down there.<\/p>\n
“We went under, and I start hearing, ‘Abort dive! Abort dive! Abort! Abort dive!'” Smith said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh no, ‘right? So, I went to ascend and hit ice. I was like, ‘Oh no, Will, calm down. Calm down.’ You have a tether on, and you have to pull yourself back to the hole, right?”<\/p>\n
Related: Exclusive: Will Smith Battles \u2018Hurricane-Like\u2019 Winds to Reach the South Pole<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Then, disaster.<\/p>\n “I grabbed and accidentally pulled my mask off,” he continued.<\/p>\n Instantly, Smith realized he made a grave mistake. He threw the mask back on, but paranoia set in. He knew he had to keep his cool because it was literally a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n Finding Humor in the Face of Adversity<\/p>\n It wasn’t long before the team above him pulled his tether and brought him back up to the surface.<\/p>\n “When I realized I was good, I just relaxed and I looked around and when I tell you, the sun is coming through the ice and it went from terror to the most spiritual, beautiful thing,” he said. “And I was just like, ‘Whoever’s up there, don’t let go of my tether!'”<\/p>\n In Smith’s trademark style, he turned a harrowing experience into brilliant comedy.<\/p>\n “I was like, ‘If I get out of here, I’m only gonna do Black stuff from here on out,'” he quipped. “‘I promise, Lord. African-American behavior from here on out.'”<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Men’s Journal<\/a> on Jan 21, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Smith is lucky to be alive. The Oscar winner recounted a frightening experience while filming his new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,147241,19,17,9163,108167,128,23668],"class_list":{"0":"post-296857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-harrowing-experience","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jimmy-fallon","14":"tag-the-north-pole","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-will-smith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115936419497632520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}