Will Smith is embarking on his most transformative adventure yet

WILL SMITH KNOWS how to push boundaries on-screen, but the actor takes that impulse to literal extremes in his new docuseries, Pole to Pole. The show follows Smith on a 26,000-mile journey from the South Pole to the North Pole, plunging him into some of the most remote environments on the planet—from the heart of the Amazon to the Kalahari Desert. Along the way, Smith joins scientists at the bottom of caves in search of cures for deadly diseases and researchers in freezing Arctic waters looking for ways to address climate change. He also meets with the people who call these places home.   

Ahead of Pole to Pole’s January 13 premiere on National Geographic (streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu), we sat down with Smith and asked him to reflect on the lessons he learned at Earth’s edges, and why the most profound discoveries often lie far beyond our comfort zones.

The show posits that we can find the answers to life’s most important questions at the edges of the world. Across Antarctica, the Amazon, the Himalaya—what answers did you actually find?

That basic concept, that life is out there on the edges, mirrors something my grandmother used to say. She’d say, “God placed the greatest things in life on the other side of fear.” There’s something about getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s where the greatest lessons and the greatest learnings are. In visiting people who live in extreme environments over and over again, I found the paradox that being happy is often found in your greatest difficulties. That paradox was really big in Bhutan. It’s one of the happiest places in the world. I asked a monk, “What is it about Bhutan?” He said a big part of it is their attention to impermanence—that no one is allowed to forget that they’re going to die. They constantly remind each other that life is impermanent through what seems like a dark attention—that you’re thinking about dying, and you’re thinking about everyone around you dying. What it does is bring you back to the idea of what a gift this current moment is.

Your guide in Bhutan said that happiness comes from being in a “right relationship” with nature. After traveling the world, did you find that to be true?

For me, it was more about having the right relationship with other humans: The cultivation of fulfilling relationships and removing anything within me that doesn’t lend itself to memorable, joyful relating. Can you connect and have a moment? It might be just this one time that you’re going to see this person. What is the quality of the interaction? Can it be something that is memorable? Can it be joyful? Can it uplift both of us?

You’ve reflected on how your pursuit of fame and box office success once came at the expense of your connection to other parts of life. Has your mindset changed?

There’s a false idea I had that being successful and being able to provide a material environment for my family was equivalent to love and happiness. I was really centered on being number one at the box office. In that process you can miss that somebody on the set is pregnant and they’re a month away from having a baby, or that somebody just lost a loved one. The singular focus on winning made me less aware of the beautiful movements of life. I shifted away from a pure focus on winning to redefining the win as when everybody learns and grows and connects in the process.

You pushed your mind and body, from ice climbing in Antarctica to diving in the North Pole and looking for organisms efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. What was the hardest physical challenge you encountered? 

The physical part… I’m up for. I’ve pushed my body before, I’ve trained. The real push for me in this was being able to relax in fear. The most sketchy thing for me was the dive at the North Pole. Right before I jumped in, [someone on the boat] said, “Hold, hold, hold.” He noticed that my gear was frozen. If I had jumped in when it was frozen, I wouldn’t have had any control of my buoyancy. That one was a little nerve-racking.

What did it feel like to be at the forefront of that type of exploration?

It’s really great being around people who are pushing themselves, who are devoted to the evolution of humanity. That is such a big calling for people who are going to live on the edges of human understanding. Go out and take a risk, push the envelope, and bring it back to your community.

In the Amazon you helped milk a tarantula. What did you learn by intentionally chasing what scares you?

Well, first, how beautiful this planet is, how amazing things are. I was talking to someone earlier about why we do these things. What happens is that if you’re in one place too long, you habituate what you eat and where you go and the things you watch. You fall into a psycho-emotional prison and don’t even realize that you’re trapped in this small constellation of ideas.

Going to these places and doing these things blasted my mind open and made me realize that my problems are tiny compared to what’s happening around the world. There are people who actually don’t care and don’t know anything about the things I think are the most important things in the world. It creates an emotional spaciousness. There’s different lives and different people and different experiences, and there’s no such thing as being trapped. The only place you can truly be trapped is in your mind. And then, once your mind opens, the world opens. And when the world opens, it’s magnificent.

After facing so many literal dangers, did your fear of more symbolic dangers—like judgment or failure—start to feel different?

Yes, absolutely. It is learning how to be with my mind when it’s in a storm, learning how to relax when life is life-ing. Life is always moving, and I’m learning how to take a deep breath and settle into the eye of the storm and ride it until it passes. 

When we did the North Pole dive, we weren’t going to get a lot of shots at it. A storm was coming in, so we had to hurry and do the dive. My mind was screaming: Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it! Being able to settle my mind in that storm was the highest gift. I think it is one of the central human qualities to be able to manage whatever arises: You’re going to be with life on life’s terms. 

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.