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00:00Welcome back to Deadline Contenders TV Documentaries and Unscripted.
00:04David Blaine, Do Not Attempt is a six-part documentary series that explores the world through his unique lens.
00:11Blaine takes viewers on a jaw-dropping journey through some of the world's most extraordinary cultures
00:16while seeking out incredible people who perform real feats that look like magic.
00:21Here to talk about it is the man himself, David Blaine. Welcome, David.
00:26Hi, nice to meet you.
00:27Before we get into this, we want to share a clip.
00:38Don't forget your leg.
00:42Yeah.
00:44First time, you try to touch.
00:53Okay.
00:55Slowly.
00:56Slowly.
00:57Mm-hmm.
01:02Yeah.
01:02Yep.
01:04Take a breath.
01:15Good?
01:16Good.
01:24Yeah.
01:25Good.
01:29Good.
01:29Okay.
01:30Slowly.
01:33Yeah.
01:34Yeah.
01:36Wait, wait, wait.
01:45Slowly.
01:45Slowly.
01:45In this moment.
02:06Slowly.
02:07Slowly.
02:10Slowly.
02:10Nothing else exists.
02:12Okay.
02:13That's enough.
02:13Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:14Good.
02:15Good.
02:20Good.
02:33Good.
02:38Well,
02:38good.
02:38I don't know.
02:38Where shall I begin, but before we get into anything, we got to go right to that moment where
02:44you shot it when tell me about it we went to indonesia to meet fitz who's who's a day boost
02:51practitioner and he's been actually working with with king cobras and snakes for 20 years now
02:57publicly since uh 2010 and we we went to bantan we went all around and he showed me his lifestyle
03:06and he started to teach me how to feel a little comfortable around venomous snakes not the king
03:12cobra yet but in indonesia there was no anti-venom so that shot that you're seeing is actually in
03:20thailand and it was a beautiful location that we did to to do this this unbelievable moment with
03:27this incredible performer but what happened was the rehearsals before that which were also in thailand
03:35where they do produce the anti-venom we were you see a building in the background when i'm first
03:41rehearsing which is before this scene and it's because the hospital was right within eyeshot it
03:46was so so so we started near a hospital and then we went into the most beautiful
03:52place to do this with fits and he flew for the first time he had never been on an airplane we helped him
03:59get a passport and he flew to thailand to to walk me through this and it was it was it was amazing it was
04:07up until that point that probably the most unpredictable and scariest moment in my career
04:15because in in my mind if anything went wrong that that would probably lead to at best a very long
04:22hospital visit oh my gosh so in that moment were you basically a snake charmer is that what you were
04:29doing in that moment i was connecting completely and trusting fits rightfully so because he's a master
04:35at what he does so i was very tuned into everything that he had told me and i processed it and it was
04:41it did it at my speed so it was baby steps but he he shared everything with me and made me very
04:48comfortable wow all right let me back up how did you um how did you embark on this where did you get
04:54this idea for this docuseries the idea actually began in i think 2013 where i traveled to liberia
05:04in africa to meet somebody that had one skill that i was obsessed with since i was a kid and it was
05:10the ability to water spout there was an act by a guy named haji ali who was the human fire hydrant and i
05:17watched it over and over at the museum of broadcasting because that was there was no youtube there was no
05:23videos it was impossible to find he was on a show called laurel and hardy which i think it was about a
05:29century he was doing this like the same time as houdini so about a century ago and a little less
05:36but almost and i studied it repetitively watched it over and over and i decided i was going to try
05:42to learn how to do it so i started drinking like he does hundreds of glasses of water i didn't do the
05:49part that i love that he did which was then he would drink kerosene which would float on top of the
05:54water then he would spit the kerosene out to a small flame and he would ignite an enormous fire
05:59like a human dragon and then with the gallon of water he would extinguish the fire and i thought it
06:05was just the most magical thing i'd ever seen and harry houdini had wrote about these performers and
06:10studied them and ricky jay had written about haji ali specifically in a book called learned pigs
06:15and fireproof women anyway that pursuit that pursuit of trying to learn it by myself went nowhere i would
06:22drink so much water i would drink a few liters and be ill and couldn't be nauseous the whole day
06:27so when i saw this video of winston doing it in liberia i tracked him down flew there and as soon as
06:36i spent a few the first few minutes with him i actually was able to start doing it and i'm still
06:42working on it still work in process but that began the idea of if something is done by one it can be done
06:48by others and that was an interesting pursuit that matthew acres the the person directed real
06:53magic he said this should be a series so the idea of teaming up with imagine national geographic and
07:00searching around the world for these fascinating people that i've only read about in the past that
07:05you could never have access to if you were harry houdini a hundred years ago and he wrote about
07:09in a book called miracle mongers that i studied but being able to meet these people that i consider
07:14pushing themselves to the point that they're doing things that should not be possible which to me is
07:20the closest thing to magic has been the the excitement and the dream so it's been an incredible
07:26journey you had a quote in the first episode that says magic can be so much more is that is that what
07:33you mean is that it's it's not necessarily magic magic it's just spectacular i mean what did you mean by
07:39that yeah i mean i what i mean is because obviously i was never an illusionist i had a deck of cards
07:46growing up in brooklyn this is what what this is what started me so it was it was basically simple
07:51things i would watch the guys on the boardwalk in coney island that would do sword sawing and all these
07:56things that were real where their bodies were the props which led to probably my early fascination
08:01plus holding my breath which is something that harry houdini used to do which is just mind over body
08:06and i think this pursuit of doing things that was about using your body pushing as hard as you can
08:13and then going even further to the breaking point to develop one skill that takes thousands and
08:19thousands of hours to learn like these incredible people that we see but it's only to give that one
08:25moment of astonishment so it's like the invisible work that they put in to create that one fleeting
08:30moment of astonishment to me that's the real magic and that's what i find beautiful so it was a search for that
08:36do you always have a deck of cards in your hand yeah yeah oh my god okay was part of the goal here
08:46to not only go to these destinations but to pull off uh perform a stunt of your own like for example in
08:54the first episode we see you you know pulling off your fire jump thingy was that the plan this so
09:01basically what i was getting was a crash course into their world so normally when i do a stunt like
09:09holding my breath it's like a three-year process to do that one act but this was so basically meeting
09:15these incredible searching for the experts all over the world was was done by an incredible research
09:21team and my magician friends and imagine and everybody was just searching the entire world to
09:27find people and i gave the parameter i said i want things that when you show them to me they make me
09:32feel uncomfortable even thinking about trying so that that that's the goal so so when you present
09:37these things i want i don't want it to be a walk in the park i want to be things that are on the edge of
09:42there's no way he could ever pull this off or or should even try and then what was different and unique
09:49about this was i would they were walking me through carefully because some of the things were very
09:55dangerous and they were giving me a crash course so it's like over the course of of a year i you
10:01know which is we filmed over years i learned all of these skills but just briefly and and and done in
10:08the safest way possible well i was pretty proud of you by the way um that you didn't put the needles
10:15down your nail bed but you did go ahead and shove the knife in your nose and good idea by the way
10:22getting the x-ray later so we could see exactly where it landed nobody tries it that made me decide
10:31to call the show do not attempt because that that one i didn't want somebody to think oh i can just do
10:36that and he's he's slowly worked his way to figure it out and as a magician i've put nails in my nose
10:42and i've done i've done things never a serrated steak knife i didn't even know that was possible
10:46but i trusted what he was saying and i did it slowly and carefully and he gave me some
10:50some inside information on how to do it carefully so that was good but i i wanted to see where it
10:57went i was curious so that's why i wanted to to go get an x-ray done of it as well not just that it
11:02would be cool to see but also just from a medical point of view it's like where am i and then i saw
11:09that the blade the tip of it was right on the edge of the nervous system yeah yeah oh one thing about
11:16this is that you definitely visit people in places that we've never heard of before how did you find
11:21these folks so lots of magicians were helping out and just sending all the the people that they thought
11:29they would find intriguing we searched the internet and then imagine had this amazing research team
11:35and they were just looking through every little nook and cranny of everybody incredible all over the
11:41world in different places and then then we'd start to lock on like they'd say oh what do you think
11:45about this and i said oh well i want to start with india because i was inspired by a book called swami
11:50mantra which was a magician wrote many of the methods to what the fakirs were doing which i which kind
11:59of kick-started my pursuit of that so india was our first and then then we kept going along the way
12:05southeast asia and then we went to brazil you know the one thing that i've noticed with this and
12:11all your past specials and events is that you have you temper your voice so you sound very calm
12:17and very assured and i wonder if that actually is for the benefit of the viewers so we don't get
12:24quite stressed out have you noticed that because now you're talking like a normal dude but you're very
12:30measured during your during this is that did you do that on purpose also we would spend hours working
12:38on one line we'd sit together in a room and we would all and we would all try to figure out the
12:43meaning and the purpose and we'd bounce it back and forth until it made sense so every we worked a year
12:49just on getting the the words right so it was a year of pre-production a year of filming and then a year
12:55finishing the entire series but it was it was it was so meticulous and we all cared so much and
13:02everybody on the team worked around the clock diligently and it was it was it was incredible
13:08to see the people working behind the scenes i felt were almost like inspired by and connected to the
13:18people in the series because it's like behind the scenes they were putting in the same amount of work
13:23as what we were filming so it was pretty incredible i have to ask you about swimming with the anaconda
13:29because yeah that's not something you see every day either uh i was i was blown away at how close you
13:35got and so you obviously were told it would be okay to go under underwater with them well you got when we
13:43were in the pantenal you you could search for a few weeks to find her and as soon as we arrived
13:51she disappeared and we couldn't find her anywhere and there was we couldn't find any of the anacondas
13:59but she was eight meter 25 feet long and beautiful and and we were searching on that river and it's
14:07cold by the way in that river we were searching for a few days and the crew and the director of
14:13everybody's like i think we we got to call it we're not can i go no we have to stay i mean i'll stay
14:18here alone like i have to see her i have to see the anaconda so right is the the last hour i'm not
14:29even kidding the last hour after a week of searching a week of pre-searching with yuka our team arriving
14:36and then on the last moment of of the second day that we were there one of yuka's guys saw just a
14:44little glimpse under a some leaves in a tree and and immediately he knew that that she was there
14:52and she was hiding in the water because she was feeding she was hungry by the way and we saw her
15:00we followed her she went in and then we went in and it was it was like looking at a mythological
15:06creature it was it was so mind-blowing it was she was so beautiful it was incredible did she look like
15:13they look in the movies where is she bigger or smaller she was they made a whole movie out of
15:18that the movies are wrong she was beautiful she was enormous but it was like it almost felt like
15:26staring like living at a time where you know you might see you know creatures that you never even
15:34dinosaurs it felt like it felt like you know this could have been a hundred million years ago
15:41it was unbelievable yeah no but there i had no fear i trusted karina a hundred percent i trusted yuka
15:52and and i just did exactly what i was told and we just stayed put went down and she would come
15:59right next to us and it was you can't see it but underwater i'm emotional it's it was amazing
16:05by the way did you feel any fear with that cobra the cobra yes the anaconda no and i actually think
16:13the cobra up until the black mambas was the most dangerous thing i've ever done i think the kissing
16:18the king cobra to me because it's very unpredictable whereas when you're with white sharks if you're
16:24looking for them if one's coming from they say they say with white sharks it's the ones that you don't
16:29see that you have to worry about not the ones that you see right so if you're looking for white sharks
16:34you're seeing what's around but with the king cobra i felt like if if i just moved wrong and and and
16:40and if she you know if she went after me i think it would have been it could have been really bad so
16:47that one you could see i'm black circles on my eyes i'm i look pretty exhausted just trying to figure
16:54out how to do this so that that until the black mambas which came in south africa was the most intense
17:01moment of my career by far one more question i'll let you go you had to have found so many more
17:08folks that you couldn't fit into this docu-series is are you going to come back for more what's the
17:13plan i don't know physically i'm going to be capable of doing that but but yeah there are so many
17:21fascinating people and there's so many stories that i was amazed by and intrigued from all different
17:26parts of the world so this is this three-year journey was one of the greatest highlights of
17:32my entire career so you know i don't know where it'll take us or anything like that but but it
17:38wasn't it was what an incredible experience oh heck yeah actually there's actually one other thing
17:44that i want to get into and i'm sure you've you've heard this uh constantly you remember when you did
17:50that uh trick with harrison ford in his house with the card that continues to go viral it still pops up
17:58um on instagram and of course i watch it every time but that you because obviously the best part
18:04about it is when harrod says get harrison says get the hell out of his house do people constantly bring
18:11that up with you that mean i was with him in london and we're walking around uh the hotel that he was
18:18staying at and it was funny to have people react to us and then i would go do magic to them but
18:22it was really funny but yeah i think that's probably the thing that people recognize me the
18:27most for these days so yeah yeah it's good you know it was a good trick too all right thank you so
18:33much david thank you all right thanks for watching enjoy the rest of the show all right thank you