Famed rapper/actor Will Smith has now taken his talents to the travel documentary world with his new 2026 TV series, Pole to Pole with Will Smith (which you can watch with a Disney+ subscription), which sees the Oscar winner take on some wild and adventurous challenges. While the time he spent working on the intense series is admirable, he funnily admitted that he thinks fellow Oscar winner Denzel Washington is to “blame” for him taking on the dangerous show.
Why Does Will Smith “Blame” Denzel Washington For Him Doing Dangerous Challenges On Pole To Pole?
Even though Will Smith is known for action-heavy blockbusters like the Bad Boys franchise, Independence Day, the Men in Black movies, and Suicide Squad, he’s never seemed like much of a real life daredevil (which Bad Boys for Life proved to him). So, why would the actor decide to star in a show like Pole to Pole, which sees him literally do things like scuba diving underneath the ice in the Arctic (which led to a horrifying but hilarious near-death experience) and enduring other dangerous trials? As he recently said when appearing on The Tonight Show, he thinks it’s Denzel Washington’s fault. He explained:
I blame Denzel, actually. It’s a long story. Probably like 15 years ago, I went to go talk to Denzel, you know? So we go to his house, Pauletta and Jada go off. And Denzel had worked all day. So he comes in, he sits down, and I can tell Pauletta made him talk to me. So he sits down, and he says, ‘Everybody’s 40s are funky. I call it the funky 40s. You built this life up for yourself and everything, and some parts of it don’t work for you anymore. But then you get to the F-it 50s. You get to your 50s, and you just say F-it. You just say F-it.’
Look, I love the idea of being in my “Fuck It 50s” (per Washington’s instructions) as I’m sure many people in mid-life would, but that doesn’t automatically mean that we’re all going to go out and milk tarantulas or climb ice mountains in blizzards, which are both things that the Hitch star did for his new show. But, Smith continued:
And he said, ‘You decide you’re just gonna be yourself, and you’re gonna do what you wanna do and take what the world gives you.’
Smith (who’s also given his own keen advice to up-and-comers in the past like Tyrese Gibson) also noted in the interview that he had noticed that some things about his life weren’t working, as Washington said. He’d worked hard enough and been lucky enough to have financial and material concerns taken care of, and came to the realization that feeling fulfilled in the next chapter of his life would only come if he worked through his “deepest fears.” Apparently, these physical tests he underwent for Pole to Pole are part of what’s helping him achieve that.
And, you know what? I love that for Will. But, I totally plan to keep my Fuck It 50s on dry, flat, tarantula-free land as much as possible for the foreseeable future.
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