Bear Grylls Plays Dirty (Outside Magazine – 05/01/2010)
How does a guy go from hardcore adventurer to (mega-famous) television hero without losing his head? By playing himself.
“Where are you? The dogs are here.” It’s the Discovery Channel PR handler, calling from the set in downtown Los Angeles.
“Stuck in traffic,” I say. “These storms got everything backed up.”
I’ve got to hurry—the dogs are about to attack!
It’s a dreary day in early February, and I’m just barely crawling along the freeway, creeping past one ugly accident after another. The latest in a series of El Niño storms is turning the L.A. foothills to mud, and now whole neighborhoods are sliding into oblivion. Miles ahead, somewhere in downtown L.A., Bear Grylls, the 36-year-old former UK Special Forces paratrooper who for the past four years has braved the world’s harshest environments as the star of the Discovery Channel’s runaway hit Man vs. Wild, is about to be mauled by wild dogs as part of his latest foray into reality television—a new series, making its debut this spring, calledWorst Case Scenario.