Steve-O wanted to shoot a bullet through his face as a stunt but had to cancel: 'The worst idea'

"What, am I going to end up with more fake teeth? Big whoop," the "Jackass" star tells Entertainment Weekly of firing a bullet into his cheeks.

After "backing out over the boob job," Steve-O reveals he had to cancel another intense physical stunt for his upcoming Super Dummy! Tour: shooting himself in the face with a gun.

"The boob job wasn't even the worst idea, not even close," the Jackass alum tells Entertainment Weekly. "I would say the worst idea was when I decided that, if I were to fire a bullet through my cheeks, I figured that I had enough space in between my teeth when my mouth is wide open. With a super slow motion camera, you'd be able to see the bullet pass through my cheeks and my mouth. I didn't think that the stakes were that high. What, am I going to end up with more fake teeth? Big whoop."

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However, the comedian learned his planned stunt was actually severely life-threatening because the bullet wouldn't pass through his cheeks in a straight line as he intended.

"Especially small caliber bullets like a .22, which is what I would imagine we would have to use, when they hit soft tissue, they absolutely change direction," Steve-O says. "Enough for it to hit a tooth, which would then absolutely make it ricochet in crazy directions. As hard as I tried, and as many people as I reached out to, all roads led to that not happening either."

Steve-O recently opened up about how he had to cancel a stunt where he planned to get breast implants until a conversation with transgender person had a "profound" impact on him. He's not surprised that multiple ideas for his new tour (launching Oct. 4) didn't pan out for different reasons, because he's trying to "push boundaries" on an already "absurd" career at 50 years old.

"If it wasn't for Tom Cruise being as badass as he was through his 50s and now into his 60s, I don't know that I would have so much inspiration," he says. "I'm out to make Tom Cruise look like a big fat p---y. That's my mantra. It's a tough spot to be in, but I'm a persistent bastard, and I've made up my mind that I'm going to be badass and I'm going to keep pushing boundaries at 50 years old. That's what this whole boob job idea was and what the whole exercise has turned into, putting together this new tour. It's been largely a comedy of errors, and there's been a lot of surprising success."

Even the canceled gunshot to the face produced a bit that Steve-O can't wait for fans to see in his new tour. "Boy, did I not let go of my determination to get comedy out of guns," he says with a laugh. "There's a hidden camera prank in the show that is so f---ing fantastic, I won't give away too much, but I go into a gun shop where they have no idea that they're being filmed, and I'm looking for a recommendation on the best gun to shoot myself with. For every terrible idea that didn't work out, there's something to really make up for it, and that's why I'm so thrilled about this show."

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Steve-O may be determined to keep pushing the boundaries of comedy as he ages, but throughout the planning and execution of his new tour, he came to realize he does, indeed, have limits, despite his larger-than-life career. "I might not have another show like this in me," he admits. "As far as the high-impact physical stunts, I just don't know if I could one-up this one. At the same time too, every single project that I've ever worked on in my career was always going to be my last one. Maybe I will evolve and figure out what comes next, but I just don't see how I can push my body further than I've been pushing it for this."

The comedian has always been extremely aware that his "desire for attention outweighs [his] desire for comfort," but as he and his fellow Jackass costars get older, they've had to reckon with the realities of their decades of severe injuries. In 2022, Johnny Knoxville opened up to EW about how Jackass Forever marked the end of him doing any more life-threatening stunts, because he physically couldn't risk getting another concussion.

"Knoxville with the concussions is super scary," Steve-O says. "There's no doubt that Knoxville should not be hitting his head anymore. I don't want to hit my head anymore — even though I might be getting ready to hit it pretty hard here this coming week. I can keep beating myself up for a little while longer."

That last sentence is important. Steve-O points out that his entire career, both on Jackass and in his solo standup tours, has always been targeting himself and not others. That's why he's been so open about why he canceled getting breast implants, because while he "wasn't trying to be hurtful or do harm," he learned that the stunt could have a negative effect for the transgender community.

"I know that a lot of the feedback has been, 'This is what's wrong with comedy, woke culture has ruined everything, Steve-O's gone woke.' To some extent, I would say that that's valid," Steve-O says. "However, it's not really applied to me or to Jackass in general because we've always been so mindful to only target and be mean to ourselves and each other, but we've always been super respectful of everybody else. There's never been anything mean-spirited about it, nothing hateful — we've just given ourselves a really hard time in our efforts to spread joy to everybody else."

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As Steve-O reflects on all his past stunts, he's proud of how he can view them "as super wholesome" because of that fact. "I would argue that we've always been woke — if to be woke means that you have real sensitivity to how others are treated, then yeah, I'm woke," he adds. "That's why it's just never really come up, and I also think that's why Jackass has aged as well as it has: I've never sought to be mean-spirited or to do harm, and I think that that's super evident in my work."

While he wishes he never announced his plans to get breast implants in the first place, he's not afraid to admit that he was wrong.

"To say that I was going to do that as publicly as I did and then back out, that was the hardest thing — I've never been the guy who says he's going to do something and then doesn't do it," he adds. "I felt really embarrassed and ashamed of that. At the same time, and perhaps in equal measure, I'm proud to have the ability to admit when I got something wrong, because there's a lot of people in the world that will never admit when they're wrong. I'm tremendously proud to be a person who can and does, and I got this one wrong. It's that simple."

More info and tickets for Steve-O's Super Dummy! Tour are available at steveo.com.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.