Johnny Knoxville reveals the one Jackass stunt nobody wanted to do, but did anyway

The Jackass franchise has seen some truly wild stunts over the years, but one of them was so extreme that Johnny Knoxville had to convince everyone else to take part in it.

As UNILAD reports, the stunt in question was included in the 2006 film Jackass Number Two, and actually brought Bam Margera to tears. You might have already guessed it, but I’m talking about the notoriously explosive ‘riot control test’.

Take a look at our interview with Jackass stars Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O below.

The riot control test put the Jackass stars in front of a non-lethal machine, which shot out around 700 45-calibre rubber balls at a rate of 500 feet per second. Needless to say, it’d be a terrifying prospect to go anywhere near one of these things, and in an interview with GQ, Knoxville revealed that he was originally the only person willing to face the stunt.

“Initially, after we did the test in front of the cast, no one was going to do it except for me,” he said. “I was sitting in the car, listening to my cousin Roger Alan Wade’s music, and Ryan [Dunn] gets in the car and he’s like, ‘Sorry man, I’m just not gonna do it, I don’t feel like doing this.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s okay buddy, you don’t have to do it.’"

“Then, they called me into the set, and he just gets out of the car with me, and just starts walking in stride with me. By then, I could tell he was gonna do it,” he continued. “And then Bam was telling us no way is he going to do it, but I remember convincing him with, 'Look it's just loud. It’s gonna hurt, but it’s just loud.’ Which was not a very good way of convincing him, but somehow that worked and Bam ended up doing it, and he was gold, ‘cos I think he cried.”

In the interview, Knoxville claimed that the rubber balls “stung”, which I think might be downplaying it slightly.