Will Smith has seen death too near to be true.

On Tuesday, January 20, an episode of The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, the Oscar-winning actor, revealed that he almost died while diving in the Arctic.

Smith’s diving stunt was for his new travel series project with Disney+, Pole to Pole With Will Smith.

“We went scuba diving at the North Pole, right? So we did a dive under the ice,” Smith explained on the show. “So you go under the ice, and the ice can be up to 10 feet thick. So we’re under, we went out about 40 yards away… It’s like an upside-down ice mountain range, right?”

However, his thrilling adventure went off-road few minutes after starting. Smith recalled that as soon as he went under, he started to hear “Abort dive! Abort dive! Abort!”

“And I’m like, ‘Oh no,’ right? So I went to ascend and hit ice,” Smith revealed. “I was like, ‘Oh no, Will, calm down. Calm down.’ You have a tether on, and you have to pull yourself back to the hole, right? I grabbed and accidentally pulled my mask off.”

He quickly pulled his mask back into place, forcing himself to breathe and steady his nerves as the adrenaline began to fade.

Lightening the moment, Smith cracked a joke, quipping that if he made it out alive, he was done taking risks.

“I was like, ‘If I get out of here, I’m only doing Black stuff from now on,’” he laughed. “I promised the Lord, African American behaviour only.”

As he worked to regain his composure, Smith said he suddenly felt a firm tug from above. He recalled that someone had grabbed his tether and began hauling him back to safety.

“When I realized I was good, I just relaxed and I looked around and when I tell you, the sun is coming through the ice and it went from terror to the most spiritual, beautiful thing,” he said. “And I was just like, ‘Whoever’s up there, don’t let go of my tether!’”