Jackass Forever MVP Danger Ehren breaks down his gnarliest stunts (2024)

Two decades and countless medical bills since it all began, the unruly Jackass crew have conquered the box office and found critical acclaim with their fourth feature film installment, Jackass Forever. Amidst the blood, sweat and pig sem*n, a new MVP emerges: Ehren "Danger Ehren" McGhehey – the mohawked former pro-snowboarder turned vital piece of the Jackass puzzle. While his past involvement in Jackass saw him sport a pube beard and lose a tooth to a Lamborghini, his endurance is pushed to new heights in Jackass Forever, as he puts his testicl*s on the line for a series of gruelling ‘cup tests’ and stares down a hungry bear while strapped to a chair. Ehren’s motto might be Safety First, but what does it take to put yourself in harm’s way and come out smiling the other side? GQ caught up with McGhehey to find out the best – and worst – parts of filming Jackass Forever, and what we can expect to see in 4.5.

GQ: This is the first interview where I've had to ask someone about their testicl*s, but yours do go through a lot in Jackass Forever. The big one is “The Cup Test”, which escalates an original bit Johnny Knoxville did in the show. Johnny couldn't do it on Jackass Forever because he'd had surgery, so how did you end up drawing the short straw?

Ehren McGhehey: A lot of the skits I do, I write myself, and with the break we had in production because of Covid, for several months, I was coming up with things that I could do that wouldn't break my neck. That was the one thing I didn’t want to do again, but my other body parts were up for grabs. But When we got back to filming, the team said, "We want you to do this cup test," and we had Francis Ngannou, world heavyweight, hardest recorded puncher in the world, come and hit me in the nuts. But once we did that, I was like, "Well, this is going to be something that I think we should do over and over again in different ways." So I came up with some new ways to do it.

GQ: Which was the worst one?

EM: The pogo stick, absolutely. That blew out my right testicl*. It just ruptured. So it was pretty gnarly. But when we were making the movie, we were trying to make people laugh, and it was a really good opportunity, even at my expense. So I will rupture my right testicl* in the name of entertainment.

GQ: In the name of comedy.

EM: So we filmed with Francis, and then a few weeks later we did the softball one, and I'm actually wearing the cup upside down because my balls were still so swollen from the punch. But then it took 15 attempts to get the softball shot, so an hour later, I told Jeff and Knoxville "I'm so messed up right now. I don't want to wait a couple of days to do the pogo stick. Let's just get it over with because I'm already so destroyed that it's really better to do it all in one." So I had Dave [England] do it because Dave brought a pogo stick with him the day we shot the pilot for the TV show, so it was an homage to him being the pogo stick guy back in the day, and I also knew that he was probably the best at getting a target. Like a really small target! Sure enough, he got it on the second attempt, and I swear to God, it hurt so badly it went right through my body.

GQ: I'm wincing thinking about this. I'm extremely pain averse.

EM: Me too! I'm so pain averse! I'm not one of those guys who says "I don't feel pain", my nervous system is on fire all the time. I have felt pain at a level at which I don't think human beings are supposed to feel pain.

GQ: What did the doctors say when you went to get checked out?

EM: At first the doctor couldn't understand, he thought I'd done it to myself. So I had to explain, "No, the pogo stick landed on my penis! My right testicl* to be specific!" Then he was like, "Wait, I recognise you, you're one of the Jackass guys!" So then he realised what we were doing. And then from there on, he was just like, "Okay, whatever you tell me, it will make sense to me now. Anything's possible."

GQ: Another incredible moment in the film comes when you're strapped in a chair for the lie detector and Knoxville covers you in honey and salmon before they bring a bear in. Was that as terrifying as it looked?

EM: You know, the terror comes mostly from not knowing what's happening. With that skit I knew it was supposed to be a lie detector, which I knew was bullsh*t, it wasn't even plugged in. But I have to allow myself to take whatever is gonna come at me. I thought that maybe it would be bees, which is why I kept saying I was allergic to bees, but the door the bear comes through – that door wasn't even there. There was a bookcase in front of it, and they moved it to the side. When it opened, it took me a second to process what I was seeing. It felt like I was watching a movie, I think I literally left my body for a moment, and then was like "It's real. And I'm strapped to this chair with honey and salmon all over me."

A bear is something you just don't mess with. And I couldn't defend myself! You know the scene in The Revenant with Leo fighting the bear? That was the first thing that popped into my mind. I was just thinking "How am I gonna fight? Is he gonna eat me?" And then I'm getting electrocuted in the neck with the dog collar by Knoxville, while trying to keep as still as possible. I think I was in there for about 30 minutes, but you only see a few in the film. Towards the end it ran out of salmon and it went to bite my hand which is when the trainer came rushing in and they pulled me out. Even after it was over. I still didn't know it was over.

GQ: You're never really sure with Jackass if it's over or if there's a second half to the bit.

EM: And sometimes there's a third half!

GQ: The "Silence of the Lambs” prank is a very good example of that, because you're put into this dark room, then there are snakes, then there's a taser, then there's a door with pots and pans…

EM: And that room wasn't even supposed to be dark. Constantly in the back of my mind I'm thinking "Is this an elaborate skit or is it something else that they're going to film?" So it was a surprise that they turned out the lights, then it could have been anything. Bears, rattlesnakes. No word of a lie I tried to break down a door. I messed up my arm doing it. The funniest part about that was Dave kept asking for me, he's like "Ehren! Ehren!" but I slid underneath the couch cushions and I hid there for about five minutes. Dave thought that I'd left the room. When I finally found the doorway out, Dave didn't believe me. He was like, "I'm not leaving!" And then I said "Fine! Later!" and I got [whacked] on the head by a pan. It was the craziest thing.

GQ: Was the bear or the spider helmet worse?

EM: So they're both terrifying in different ways. The bear was terrifying in that, "I'm gonna lose my life and I can't move". The spider was terrifying because of my natural fear of spiders, especially tarantulas. I kept imagining the spider crawling up onto my face and biting my eyeballs. But the worst part was that they didn't tell us that tarantulas shoot off these tiny hairs, and the spider was running around in my helmet for like 10 minutes which they didn't show in the film, and my eyes are wide open. I couldn't see for two weeks because it shot all those hairs into my eyes and it burned! I couldn't figure out why my eyes were burning. And then Jules Sylvester [animal trainer] is like "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they shoot off hairs in self-defence." Thanks for telling me that Jules.

GQ: Was there anything that you did during filming that you were really sad that you had to lose in the edit?

EM: Well there's lots that we're gonna put in 4.5, and I think that 4.5 will be just as good as Forever. For the “Cup Test”, we did five different ones, but only four made it to the movie. The one we didn't put in, I had a 16-pound bowling ball bowled into my nuts at the end of a bowling alley. When it hit my balls, my hip got shifted. Like my whole spine got messed up. It was gnarly.

GQ: Are you okay now? I just want to check!

EM: Mostly! My right testicl* is still pretty sensitive. The doctor said there'll always be some sensitivity to it. My spine and hip are still pretty messed up. But regardless, we got the shot. And now it's in 4.5.

GQ: Do you ever get used to the pain or does it suck every single time?

EM: Because it's a brand new thing every time, it's not usually the same body part, there's no way to build up [a] pain tolerance. You have to mentally prepare yourself for it, know what you're getting yourself into, and have ways to mentally heal. The physical side is hard, and a lot of times once you break your body it doesn't ever heal right. But the things that are in my mind, and the things that I've been through, have definitely altered my sense of reality. PTSD and all that stuff is very real. I've been through a lot in life. From the age of three till I was 15, I lived in a mortuary. My dad is a mortician so I realised the reality of mortality very young.

GQ: “The Lamborghini Tooth Pull” from Jackass 3D is the one skit that makes me physically recoil every time I watch it. After four films and the TV show, what is the absolute worst thing you've had to endure?

EM: "The Lamborghini Tooth Pull" broke my face all the way up to my eyeball. It took nine months to heal. I broke my neck twice, once in the fat suit down the mountain in the shopping cart, and then later on a trampoline. But the one that has hurt me the most is when I laid in a tanning bed for an hour and a half with baby oil on. I cooked myself from the inside out and it took three years for my Speedo tan line to go away. It’s always the insignificant-sounding things that hurt the most.

GQ: Do you think you’ll still be making Jackass in another 10 years?

EM: After the first movie, we didn’t think we'd get to do a second or third. Now a fourth. I don't see us ever really stopping, because it's always something that's evolving. I'm always coming up with ideas. I'm always keeping myself mentally prepared for getting that call to go make another movie. It doesn't make it easier by any means to actually go out and perform these things. The first movie ends with us all old, kind of foreshadowing, and we all laughed about it then, but now that's not so far-fetched. We could be 80 years old in wheelchairs and still making people laugh.

Jackass Forever is out in UK cinemas now.

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