Will Smith is lucky to be alive.
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.
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.
‘Abort dive! Abort dive!’
“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.
He called it “an upside-down ice mountain range” once down there.
“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?”
Related: Exclusive: Will Smith Battles ‘Hurricane-Like’ Winds to Reach the South Pole
Then, disaster.
“I grabbed and accidentally pulled my mask off,” he continued.
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.
Finding Humor in the Face of Adversity
It wasn’t long before the team above him pulled his tether and brought him back up to the surface.
“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!'”
In Smith’s trademark style, he turned a harrowing experience into brilliant comedy.
“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.'”
