Over the course of his long career, magician and endurance performer David Blaine has taken on all kinds of death-defying feats: catching a bullet in his teeth, fasting for 44 days, or holding his breath for a record-breaking 17 minutes and 4 seconds, to name a few. Viewers will get to see a different side of Blaine as he travels the world to meet kindred spirits from a wide range of cultures in David Blaine Do Not Attempt, a new six-episode docuseries from National Geographic.
(Some spoilers below.)
The series was shot over three calendar years (2022-2024) in nine different countries, and features Blaine interacting with, and learning from, all manner of daredevils, athletes, street performers, and magicians. In Southeast Asia, for instance, he watches practitioners of an Indonesian martial art called Debus manipulate razor blades in their mouths and eat nails. (There is no trick to this, just conditioned endurance to pain, as Blaine discovers when he attempts to eat nails: his throat was sore for days.) He braves placing scorpions on his body, breaks a bottle with his head, and sets himself on fire in Brazil while jumping off a high bridge.
One of the elements that sets this series apart from Blaine’s previous magical specials is his willingness to be filmed practicing and training to do the various featured stunts, including early failed attempts. This makes him seem more vulnerable and immensely likable—even if it made him personally uncomfortable during filming.
David Blaine and Amandeep Singh prepare to break bottles with their fists.
National Geographic
National Geographic/Aditya Kapoor
Fire Ramesh demonstrates spitting a fireball for Blaine.
National Geographic/Aditya Kapoor
Blaine performs a triple suicide slide with Sam Sam Thubane and Kayla Oliphant
Blaine performs a triple suicide slide with Sam Sam Thubane and Kayla Oliphant
Fire Ramesh demonstrates spitting a fireball for Blaine.
National Geographic/Aditya Kapoor
Blaine performs a triple suicide slide with Sam Sam Thubane and Kayla Oliphant
National Geographic/Doug McKenzie
National Geographic
“I’ve always kept that part hidden,” Blaine told Ars. “Normally I work for a few years and I develop [a stunt] until I feel pretty good about it, and then I go and do the stunt and push myself as far as possible. But in this scenario, it was so many places, so many people, so many events, so many feats, so many things to learn so fast. So it was me in a way that I never liked to show myself: awkward and uncomfortable and screaming and laughing. It’s the things that as a magician, I always hide. As a magician, I try to be very monotone and let the audience react, but I was in that audience reacting. So for this series, I was the spectator to the magic, and it was for me very uncomfortable. But I was watching these amazing performers—what I consider to be magicians.”
