The title of David Blaine’s new show Don’t Try This is a disclaimer for a reason.
‘I woke up in the middle of the night at 3am out of a nightmare thinking, “Oh my god, what if somebody tries to copy something?”,’ he tells Metro and other press in the basement of a swanky London hotel.
It’s an understandable panic even if few people watching at home will have access to a king cobra they can even attempt to kiss or be tempted to set themselves on fire and jump off a bridge in the name of magic.
Throughout Blaine’s career, the 51-year-old has performed the most unthinkable stunts to mixed success in front the whole world on the edge of its seat.
In 2000, he suffered his first public defeat when he was prematurely removed from a block of ice after being encased for 63 hours – nine hours less than his target. He then spent 44 days without food sealed in a glass box on London’s Southbank while being pelted with McDonald’s and eggs (which wasn’t part of the plan) and he’s spent a week underwater.
Needless to say, all of these stunts came with serious repercussions to his health.
His latest six-part series with National Geographic shows a slightly more reserved side to Blaine, even if he still has that unbelievable ambition.
Don’t Try This is part a beautifully shot travelogue that takes him to India, the Arctic, the Amazon, and Africa and part his own personal endurance test, attempting tricks perfected by some of the most devoted magicians around the world.
It is extraordinary. He’s more vulnerable and personable than he’s ever been on television, happily giving himself over to masters of the craft he turned into a multi-million dollar brand, with various TV series, tours, books, and a Las Vegas residency.
‘In this show, you see me running around screaming, shrieking,’ he says. ‘Basically, I’ve become the person I try to capture on camera, showing the reactions – that’s me.’
He’s refreshingly awe-struck watching others perform tricks he’s never even imagined, but still, when he’s so far removed from his comfort zone (whatever that might be) he remains determined to give everything a go.
Animals feature heavily in these stunts, which is unlike anything we’ve seen from Blaine before, adding a completely different level of tension. Most notably, he comes up and personal with some of the deadliest snakes on the planet, including one cobra that killed its previous owner. One wrong move could be catastrophic.
‘Normally my stunts are worked out for a few years, but this was all a crash course,’ he says.
‘I met the best in the world, and they let me into their world, and of course, I trusted them wholeheartedly with everything by watching them and knowing how brilliant they are at what they do, but at the same time, you don’t know what that king cobra is going to do from one second to the next, and that has enough venom in it to kill a full grown elephant, right?
‘There’s an unpredictable element that you’re surrounded by, which makes it that much more exciting.’
At one point, Blaine shares a phobia he’s kept hidden his whole life: things that crawl.
‘People who knew me would laugh because if I saw a bug I’d scream,’ he tells us with a grin. Quite staggering from a man who gleefully stares death in the face for a hit of adrenaline.
Still, he faces his fears and lies in a bed of scorpions, clambering over him like tourists getting lunch at Borough Market.
Across the four episodes I was lucky enough to watch before our interview, there was only one moment when fear – or common sense – prevailed.
He’s impressed by one performer who body-slams into broken glass and smashes bottles on his head without flinching.
Blaine never looks more scared than when he’s clinging onto the neck of a bottle he’s about to shatter into his skull until he gets a call from his 14-year-old daughter Dessa, and delays the stunt, to the relief of his visibly anxious camera crew.
‘Since becoming a father, everything has changed. As you noticed, I haven’t really been doing so many stunts and then with this series, I would talk to her about anything that was dangerous.
‘I’d really understand what the risk was, work diligently on it, give her a sense of confidence by showing her proof of concept.
‘Even the bottle, I didn’t do it and then I came back to India months later to do it. I didn’t want to do anything that would be traumatic for her.’
Blaine has been perfecting the art of magic since he was six years old and he was given a deck of cards. While other kids around him were playing with Spider-man dolls, he was performing tricks to his mum and she’d ‘freak out’.
He’s essentially spent his whole life absorbing all the tricks of the trade and becoming the most prolific magician of a generation.
But even at this point in his career, his travels around the world for Don’t Try This, he says, has ‘changed the way I think’.
‘It’s inspired me to push and keep going, but respecting the limitations.
‘I’m at the point now where I’m a father, I’m not 27 and standing on a block of ice! So [I ask myself] can I learn from somebody, can I constantly be a student, and can I still grow with things that I’ve only looked at, never imagined doing? And the answer was, yes.
‘You keep surrounding yourself with people who inspire you, which is what this series is, and you can keep growing. I probably will never kiss a king cobra again, but it changed the way I feel about everything that I do.’
David Blaine Do Not Attempt premieres Monday 24th March on Disney+ and is on National Geographic Channel every Thursday at 9pm from 27th March.
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