Will Smith Reveals The Most 'Aura-Farming' Moment From His New Survival Docuseries

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

"How do you find Will Smith in Antarctica? Follow the Fresh Prints."

If there's one thing Will Smith refuses to lose - whether he's on a red carpet in Dubai or scuba diving under a frozen ocean - it's his sense of humour. Even at the literal ends of the Earth, the Hollywood star somehow manages to keep things light with a joke he utters as he makes his journey to the South Pole in a new docuseries.

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National Geographic's Pole to Pole with Will Smith, premiering January 13 on Disney+ in the UAE, is a seven-part cinematic docuseries that sends the 57-year-old actor across all seven continents in just 100 days. From the ice fields of Antarctica to the jungles of the Amazon, the mountains of the Himalayas, the deserts of Africa, the islands of the Pacific, and the icebergs of the Arctic, it's a journey that pushes Smith far beyond comfort, both physically and mentally.

At the series' premiere in Dubai, Smith hit the red carpet with the same charisma that's made him one of the most recognisable people on the planet. When Khaleej Times asked him where, across seven continents, he“farmed the most aura,” Smith didn't hesitate to point north, way north.

For the uninitiated, aura farming is the Gen Z way of deliberately cultivating charisma (aura points) through random actions that are considered cool in the eyes of the audience. And Will was among the first celebrities to jump on the trend that took over the internet in early 2025.

“The final episode is the North Pole, and we did a scuba dive under the ice at the North Pole. I think that was the sketchiest thing there. It's really disconcerting to be under the water and go up and hit ice, and you can't get out. You have a tether on, and you grab your tether and you've got to pull back to find where the opening is? So that was the sketchiest of all the things that we did,” Will said.

For someone who's spent decades headlining blockbusters and playing larger-than-life characters, Pole to Pole strips away performance entirely. In fact, Smith says that was part of the point. He often didn't even know what he was walking into until the cameras were rolling.

“One of the things that we did that I thought was cool was that I wouldn't know what the episode was about, so I would find out what it was about on camera," he said. "I would know we were going to the South Pole, but I would have no idea what we were going to do, and I would get briefed on camera.”

That meant discovering the danger in real time - whether it was diving beneath polar ice, climbing sheer ice walls, crawling through caves, or tracking wildlife deep in the jungle.

He continues:“So it kept the authenticity. I'm finding out that we're scuba diving while we go there, and (in other cases), I'd find out we're climbing an ice wall, going in a cave or looking for an anaconda.”

What followed, Smith explains, wasn't just adventure; it was confrontation with fear and control.

“The confronting of fear is really a central human necessity," Will said. "Fear is really at the heart of most of the mistakes that we make as humans, so for me, it was a really great to spend time at my edges and learn how to relax at the edge of existential horror.”

Pole to Pole is, in a way, inspired by Smith's late mentor, who encouraged him to explore life's biggest questions; the series becomes as much about people as it is about places.

And what surprised Smith most wasn't how different the world felt, but how similar it was.

“I found a lot of answers and a lot more questions at the same time," he said. "One of the things I noticed is that there are two things that really stood out. People are similar everywhere; we think we're really different from each other because we look different, our accents may sound different, but at the centre, we are all seeking the same things. Everybody is having a hard time with life around three or four of the same things, and I felt a sense of sameness of everyone.”

Across continents and cultures, the message kept repeating itself: humanity shares more than it realises. And standing face-to-face with the planet's most extreme environments only made that clearer, along with how little control we truly have.

He continued:“I also felt how much we're not in control, and how much of it is an illusion. You get out there, and you realise Mother Nature is in charge. The ocean could decide to rise up and there is literally nothing anybody can do, but it's a great thing to feel small. Against nature, you get really humble.”

Maybe that's the real aura farming - not surviving the extremes, but emerging from them more human and humbled than before.

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