David Blaine is no stranger to close calls, but none were closer than his most recent brush with death. On the most recent installment of his show Beyond Magic, which aired Saturday night on ABC, the 43-year-old master illusionist revealed that he accidentally shot himself in the back of his throat while attempting his latest death-defying stunt.
The incident occurred while Blaine was performing a trick called the “bullet catch,” in which he, you guessed it, catches a bullet fired from a rifle with a metal cup in his mouth. What could go wrong, right? Well, As Blaine tells it, a lot. “When the bullet struck the cup, there was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and I felt an impact on the back of my throat. I was sure the bullet went right through my head and that I was dead,” Blaine says in the special. “Suddenly I became aware of the pain and it brought me back. At that moment, I realized that the mouth guard had shattered again, and I was alive.”
The stunt went down at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in November, which means a packed house witnessed Blaine nearly bite the bullet, so to speak. He even thanked the audience before being rushed to the hospital, where he was treated for a laceration in his throat.
Despite his assistant’s vow to never help Blaine with the stunt again, the daredevil seemed totally unfazed by the mishap. “We’re going to do it right,” he says. “That’s the end of the story.”
