Throughout his long profession, magician and endurance entertainer David Blaine has actually handled all type of death-defying tasks: capturing a bullet in his teeth, fasting for 44 days, or holding his breath for a record-breaking 17 minutes and 4 seconds, among others. Audiences will get to see a various side of Blaine as he takes a trip the world to satisfy kindred spirits from a vast array of cultures in David Blaine Do Not Attempta brand-new six-episode docuseries from National Geographic.

(Some spoilers listed below.)

The series was shot over 3 fiscal year (2022-2024) in 9 various nations and functions Blaine engaging with, and gaining from, all way of daredevils, professional athletes, street entertainers, and magicians. In Southeast Asia, for example, he sees professionals of an Indonesian martial art called Debus control razor blades in their mouths and consume nails. (There is no technique to this, simply conditioned endurance to discomfort, as Blaine finds when he tries to consume nails: his throat ached for days.) He braves positioning scorpions on his body, breaks a bottle with his head, and sets himself on fire in Brazil while leaping off a high bridge.

Among the components that sets this series apart from Blaine’s previous wonderful specials is his determination to be recorded practicing and training to do the numerous highlighted stunts, consisting of early stopped working efforts. This makes him appear more susceptible and tremendously pleasant– even if it made him personally unpleasant throughout recording.

“I’ve always kept that part hidden,” Blaine informed Ars. “Normally I work for a few years and I develop [a stunt] until I feel pretty good about it, and then I go and do the stunt and push myself as far as possible. But in this scenario, it was so many places, so many people, so many events, so many feats, so many things to learn so fast. So it was me in a way that I never liked to show myself: awkward and uncomfortable and screaming and laughing. It’s the things that as a magician, I always hide. As a magician, I try to be very monotone and let the audience react. For this series, I was the spectator to the magic, and it was, for me, very uncomfortable. But I was watching these amazing performers—what I consider to be magicians.”

Security very first

The job of keeping Blaine and the whole team safe in what are absolutely harmful scenarios is up to security specialist Sebastian “Bas” Pot. “I joke that my title is Glorifed Nanny,” Pot informed Ars. “I specialize in taking people to very remote locations where they want to do insane things. I have three basic rules: No one dies, everyone gets paid, and we all smile and laugh every day. If I achieve those three things, my job is done.” He intentionally keeps himself out of the shot; there is just one scene in Do Not Attempt where we see Pot’s face as he’s talking about the dangers of a stunt with Blaine.

Blaine has actually constantly handled dangers, however since he has actually traditionally concealed his preparation from public view, audiences may not recognize how careful he truly is. “What people tend to forget about guys like David is that they’re very calculated,” stated Pot. The greatest distinction in between dealing with Blaine and other customers? “Normally I’ll do everything, I will never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” stated Pot. “David is taking huge risks, and there’s a lot that he does that I wouldn’t do.”

Like Blaine, Pot likewise highlighted the value of repeating to security. In addition, “A huge amount of it is keeping the calm on set, listening and observing and not getting caught up in the excitement of what’s going on,” he stated. While he utilizes some standard innovation for jobs like determining wind speed, looking for concussion, or keeping track of essential indications, for the a lot of part keeping the set safe “is very much about switching off from the technology,” he stated.

And when everybody else on set is enjoying Blaine, “I’m looking outwards, because I’ve got enough eyes on him,” stated Pot. There was just one bad mishap throughout shooting, including a sky diving team member throughout the Arctic Circle episode who suffered a spine fracture after a bad landing. The team member recovered and was back in the wind tunnel practicing within a month.

This is the episode where Blaine tries a Viking “death dive” into a snow drift under the tutelage of a Norwegian male called Ken Stornes, with one secret distinction: Stornes leaps from much higher heights. He likewise takes part in a sky dive. The episode mainly focuses on Blaine’s training with complimentary scuba divers under the ice to prepare for a stunt in which Blaine swims from one point under Finnish ice to another, pulling himself along with a rope while holding his breath. A big part of his inspiration for trying it was his unsuccessful 2006 “Drowned Alive” seven-day stunt in front of Lincoln Center in New York. (He sustained liver and kidney damage as an outcome.)

“One of my favorite quotes is Churchill, when he says, ‘Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next failure with enthusiasm,'” stated Blaine. “That’s what this entire series is. It’s these incredible artists and performers and conservationists and people that do these incredible feats, but it’s the thousands of hours of work, training, failure, repeat that you don’t see that makes what they do seem magical. There’s no guidebook for what they’re doing. But they’ve developed these things to the point that when I was watching them, I’m crying with joy. I can’t believe that what I’m seeing is really happening in front of my eyes. It is magical. And it’s because of the amount of repetition, work, failure, repeat that they put in behind the curtain that you don’t see.”

This time, Blaine was successful. “It was an incredible experience with these artists that have taken this harsh environment and turned it into a wonderland,” stated Blaine of his Arctic experience. “The free divers go under three and a half feet of ice, hold their breath. There’s no way out. They have to find the exit point.”

“When you stop and look, you forget that you’re in this extreme environment and suddenly it’s the most beautiful surroundings, unlike anything that I’ve ever seen,” he stated. “It’s almost like being in outer space. And when you’re in that extreme and dangerous situation, there’s this camaraderie, they’re all in it together. At the same time, they’re all very alert. There’s no distractions. Nobody’s thinking about messages, phones, bills. Everybody’s right there in that moment. And you’re very aware of everything around you in a way that normally in the real world doesn’t exist.”

Blaine confesses that his mindset towards threat has actually altered rather with age. “I’m older and I have a daughter, and therefore I don’t want to do something where, oh, it went wrong and it’s the worst-case scenario,” he stated. “So I have been very careful. If something seemed like the risk wasn’t worth it, I backed away. For some of these things, I would just have to watch, study, learn, take time off, come back. I wouldn’t do it unless I felt that the master who was sharing their skillset with me felt that I could pull it off. There was a trust, and I was able to listen and follow exactly. That ability to listen to directions and commit to something is a very necessary part to pulling something off like this.”

Given, he didn’t constantly listen. When he intentionally brought in a swarm of bees to make a “bee beard,” he was recommended to use a white T-shirt to prevent getting stung. Black is Blaine’s signature color, and he chose to stick with it. He did certainly get stung about a lots times however took the discomfort in stride. “He takes responsibility for him,” Pot (who is a beekeeper) stated of that choice. “I’d tell a crew member to go change their T-shirt and they would.”

The commitment to appropriate preparation and training appears throughout Do Not Attempthowever especially in the Southeast Asia-centric episode where Blaine tries to kiss a poisonous King Cobra– what Pot thinks about to be the most hazardous stunt in the series. “The one person I’ve ever had die was a snake expert in Venezuela years ago, who got bitten by his own snake because he chose not to follow the safety protocols we had put in place,” stated Pot.

Kissing a cobra

There were weeks of preparation before Blaine even tried the stunt, assisted by an Indonesian Debus specialist called Fiitz, who can check out the animals’ body language so easily he appears to be dancing with the snakes. (Note: no animals were hurt throughout recording.) The last shot (see clip listed below) took 10 days to movie. Antivenom was naturally on hand, however while antivenom may conserve your life if you’re bitten by a King Cobra, “the journey you’re going to go on will be hell,” Pol stated. “You can still have massive necrosis, lose a limb, it might take weeks—there’s no guarantees at all [for recovery].” And administering antivenom can cause heart shock if it’s refrained from doing properly. “You don’t want some random set medic reading instructions off Google on how to give antivenom” stated Pot.

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