Will Smith’s Near-Death Dive at the North Pole: ‘Accidentally Pulled My Mask Off!’

Will Smith learned that diving under ice can be perilous.

The 57-year-old actor opened up about his near-death experience while diving in the Arctic during a recent episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

In his Disney+ travel series, Pole to Pole With Will Smith, the actor recounted the terrifying moment he thought he might not make it back.

“We went scuba diving at the North Pole, right? So we did a dive under the ice,” Smith told Fallon. “So you go under the ice, and the ice can be up to 10 feet thick. We went out about 40 yards away… It’s like an upside-down ice mountain range, right?”

But the thrill of the adventure quickly escalated into a life-threatening situation.

“We went under, and I start hearing, ‘Abort dive! Abort dive! Abort!’” he recalled. “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? I grabbed and accidentally pulled my mask off.”

Just as fear began to take hold, Smith felt someone grabbing his tether from above. “When I realized I was good, I just relaxed and looked around. The sun was coming through the ice, and it went from terror to the most spiritual, beautiful thing,” he shared. “And I was just like, ‘Whoever’s up there, don’t let go of my tether!’”

Smith’s adventures didn’t stop with the icy dive. He also shared a thrilling story about hunting for an anaconda in the Amazon.

“We were with the natives, and they didn’t even have no clothes on, their whole name and address was hanging out,” he recounted humorously. “And so we’re going down the river, and they see the anaconda and jump out of the boat into the water and swim for the anaconda.”

Smith explained that the anaconda hunt was part of a larger conservation effort. “They had a sense that there was some kind of illegal dumping going on, and the scales of the anaconda hold whatever’s in the water,” he noted. “So they would take a scale from the anaconda and test it to be able to use it in court.”

Still, he added, “I don’t know why they needed me!”