An underwater diving experience nearly took a turn for the worst while Will Smith was filming his new travel series, Pole to Pole.
The Academy Award winner recalled shooting the show in the freezing temperatures on the Tuesday (January 20) episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Around the five-minute mark of the video below, Smith detailed that his mission was to swim "under the ice," some of which was "ten feet thick."
"So we’re under, we went out about forty yards away… It’s like an upside-down ice mountain range, right?" Smith continued. "We went under, and I start hearing, 'Abort dive! Abort dive! Abort!'"
The crew's unsettling announcement took Smith off-guard and upon trying to ascend to the water's surface, he unintentionally hit the 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? I grabbed and accidentally pulled my mask off," he told Fallon.
Once putting his dive mask back on, the entertainer jokingly avowed to not try death-defying stunts again. "I was like, ‘If I get out of here, I’m only gonna do Black stuff from here on out,'" he joked. “I promise Lord! African-American behavior from here on out!"
Smith then felt someone in his crew pull him to safety, which got the actor to calm down.
“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," Smith said. "And I was just like, 'Whoever’s up there, don’t let go of my tether!'"
Pole to Pole, which debuted on National Geographic and Hulu earlier this month, follows Smith's 2021 limited travel series Welcome to Earth. Although he didn't dive on the previous series, Smith went on a deep sea expedition in a submarine, descending 3,300 feet beneath the ocean in the Bahamas.
