Steve-O is no stranger to outrageous stunts. The celebrity has built its entire brand on them, whether with Donkey or his hour-long comedy specials. It seems, however, that his latest stunt did not go down well with the London police. Steve-O was arrested on Thursday after jumping from Tower Bridge into the River Thames.
According to TMZ, Steve-O was filming content for his latest special, and pre-jump footage shows him reckoning with fans. The celebrity can also be seen wearing Union Jack clothing and carrying an umbrella. “I just got out of a police car,” Steve-O revealed on his Instagram Feeds. “They really told me about my “Mary Poppins jump” from the Tower of London Bridge.”
Steve-O was held by London police for most of the day, but held no hard feelings towards them after his release. Police feared the stunt would encourage others to make suicidal jumps from the bridge, a subject Steve-O has clearly discouraged in the past.
“When Donkey came out, little kids showed up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw us doing this crazy shit and they wanted to do it themselves,” he said on THE Hotboxing with Mike Tyson podcast. “At that time, you could really point to us as having a bad influence.”
Steve-O, born Stephen Glover, has been a little more cautious about his influence in recent years. Still, that didn’t stop him from putting his own life on the line for entertainment. In addition to his Tower Bridge stunt, Steve-O jumped off a double-decker bus, which he admitted was much more painful. There is no confirmed release date or title for the comedy special in which these stunts will appear.
It’s a miracle that Steve-O is still able to do a lot of these things. He did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) in May, during which he admitted that the punishment he had inflicted on his body had finally caught up with him. “My body is falling apart,” he wrote. “It hurts to swing a golf club. I’m legitimately nervous about even getting to throw the first pitch in the Padres game because my shoulder is such a mess.
Although the celeb is still fit enough to do his own specials, he’s sheepish about returning for another Donkey movie. Fooled forever open to surprising box office success and critical acclaim in 2022, but the general consensus among the classic lineup was that it was time to hand over the baton to younger stuntmen. “If we continued, we would rely more on the younger cast,” Johnny Knoxville told Variety. “The elders would take a step back but would still be part of it.”
Regardless of what Steve-O does next, we hope he stays healthy and uncuffed!