Most dads celebrate their 50th with a nice dinner with the wife and kids, or if they’re really feeling adventurous, a night out at a Harrah’s or something. But if you’re Will Smith—destroyer of aliens, apocalypse survivor, certified Bad Boy—ringing in the big 5-0 apparently means strapping yourself to a bungee cord from a helicopter, and hurling your middle-aged body into the Grand Canyon.
On Tuesday, about six months after a group of YouTubers dared him to do the stunt and, because fear is not real, Smith went for it. He decided to donate proceeds from the jump to charity, livestream the whole thing, and thus, found himself here, clinging to the side of a helicopter, about to be whisked up into the sky and dangled by an elastic cord over one of America’s greatest natural wonders. Check out how excited he looked!
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The chopper took off, and for a while, Smith seemed to be handling it pretty well—he grinned at the camera, chatted with the guys onboard, and threw a peace sign up to the crowd gathered below him: his wife Jada, and his kids Jaden, Willow, and Trey were all there, looking generally terrified, as was Alfonso Ribeiro ( a.k.a. Carlton from Fresh Prince).
Then Smith made the mistake of looking down, and saw this:
“Never look down,” Smith screamed. “Never look down. That was terrible. That was just terrible.”
Pretty soon, it was time to do the damn thing. The crew onboard the helicopter counted down from five, Jaden, Willow and co. braced themselves, and Smith dove backwards out of a helicopter into the abyss.
The Pinkett-Smiths (plus Ribiero) were all, understandably, pretty psyched.
After a brief joyride over the Grand Canyon, the helicopter pulled him back over to a landing spot, because Smith was “ready for them to put my ass down.” His ass securely down, his harness removed, Smith’s death-defying plunge was complete. Now, ostensibly, it was time to do something normal with his family, like, you know, just go out for a nice dinner somewhere.
Congrats on your 50th, Will. We can’t wait to see what terrifying monument you decide to climb onto, or hurl yourself off of, next.
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