Will Smith Describes Near Death Experience Filming Pole to Pole

Last week Will Smith's documentary Pole to Pole premiered on National Geographic [click here if you missed that].

Will shares his near death experience while scuba diving in the Arctic...

From AOL

The 57-year-old actor revealed that he almost died while diving in the Arctic as part of his recently released Disney+ travel series, Pole to Pole With Will Smith.

“We went scuba diving at the North Pole, right? So we did a dive under the ice,” Smith explained to host Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s episode of The Tonight Show. “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… It’s like an upside-down ice mountain range, right?”

“We went under, and I start hearing, ‘Abort dive! Abort dive! Abort!’” Smith 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.”

He immediately affixed his mask back to his face and tried his best to calm himself down after the heart-pounding experience. “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 explained that he was in the process of calming down when he felt somebody grab “my tether up top and started pulling” him to safety.

“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!’”