When Will Smith sets out to achieve something, it’s rare that he doesn’t succeed.
When he decided to pursue a music career in his teens, it wasn’t long before he topped the Billboard Hot 100 and earned his first Grammy. When he pivoted to acting, he quickly became one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. And heck, we all know what happened when he decided to walk on stage to confront Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars.
After somewhat of a career hiatus following the latter incident, Smith has now returned to the spotlight with his greatest venture yet. Pole To Pole, a National Geographic docuseries five years in the making, follows the multi-hyphenate as he tackles incredible challenges across all seven continents in just 100 days.
Will Smith reveals his biggest fear
The result is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure where Smith skis to the South Pole, climbs the mountains of the Himalayas, catches a giant anaconda and milks a venomous tarantula in the jungles of the Amazon.
While just one of these experiences would have any other celebrity screaming “get me out of here”, Smith told PEDESTRIAN.TV he was determined to do it all.
“For me, the most important thing is I wanted to venture personally into the spaces, not just talk about them,” he said. “I wanted to go out and meet people who were living in extreme environments and experience some of what happens when you’re in those spaces, and what is the secret that comes through from venturing in that way.”
Of course, Smith’s 42,000km journey across the globe didn’t come without any fear — whether that was in the form of a dangerous creature or terrifying terrain.
“For me, I would say the number one [scariest moment] was scuba diving under the North Pole. Scuba diving under ice is quite terrifying,” he detailed. “What comes through, though, is the importance of being able to overcome fear to be able to experience beauty. It’s like you almost can’t enjoy yourself in this world if you’re scared.”
Will Smith’s greatest life lesson
Smith’s adventure kick-started following the death of his mentor, Dr Allen Counter, who had always inspired him to explore life’s big questions. Ultimately, Pole To Pole not only changed the way he sees the planet, but also the way he sees himself.
“I had a couple of moments where I realised all of the venturing outs and all of the being able to go to the edges of the world is really just mirroring back the inner landscapes,” he told P.TV.
“Like, there are places within me that are like caves and scary oceans and storms, you know, that the nature sort of reflects back the kind of things that are happening inside of us. And being able to enter a scary cave in Ecuador is very similar to being able to have a really hard conversation with somebody that you love.
“So I loved how our planet was kind of mirroring back to me things within myself I’m a little scared of also.”
Will Smith’s bucket list
After making a name for himself in film, TV and music, winning countless awards and making plenty of headlines along the way, Smith admits there’s not much left on his bucket list after filming his new series.
“I think Pole to Pole kind of ticked off those last little bucket list experiences. And not to mention it would just really be hard to top,” he remarked.
“When people see this show, some of the things that we’ve done, [it was] difficult to impossible to get to a lot of the places. And then to capture it on film the way that we were able to, it’s a cinematic accomplishment, a scientific accomplishment and a personal accomplishment for me.”
All seven episodes of Pole to Pole with Will Smith are streaming now on Disney+
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