Last week, Johnny Knoxville's long and winding Jackass farewell tour came to an end at our annual countryside summit, GQ Heroes. Having spent the past few weeks watching every bit of Jackass content that exists - including Knoxville get mauled by bulls, hit in the nuts and shot out of rockets ad infinitum - it was surreal to see him cycling around the Cotswolds in his red Chuck Taylors like a regular-ass guy in his 50s.
He joined us just a few days after the final movie in the series, Jackass: Best and Last, was released. And, in front of an audience that included Louis Theroux, Richard Gadd and Charles Melton, I had the honour of conducting what might be his last Jackass interview. As we took our seats under the lights, he U-turned on his decision to decline taking a drink on stage. "I changed my mind about that margarita," Knoxville said, eliciting a laugh from the crowd. "Can I have a margarita please?"
It has been an emotional few weeks for Knoxville. If Jackass: Best and Last really is the last Jackass movie - and he is adamant that it is - then it's curtains on the most consequential era of his life. He has shed quite a few tears - on the red carpet, on podcasts, in the movie itself. He seemed like a man ready for a break, and he was about to get one, as a belated honeymoon with his wife Emily awaited the day after our chat. But first, I had to ask him some questions that might prod the wound a little bit. Check out an edited transcript of our conversation below.
Intermission: There's been a huge outpouring of affection for you and the Jackass crew in the last few weeks. Are you feeling the love?
Johnny Knoxville: Yeah, it means the world to me.
Do you have any favourite pranks from over the years?
The High-Five. I don't know where the idea came from; I just thought it would be funny to get a six-foot-sized hand and put it behind a corner and hit people with it when they walked in. And it really worked.
You've got Ehren McGhehey coming in with a tray full of soup, and he gets hit.
I never hit that note again in my life when I said, "He fell for the soup!" My voice... I was a soprano for five seconds.
Bam Margera just fell straight flat backwards, like a cartoon character.
He got destroyed. And he was really hungover, so there was no resistance. It really helps.
Where do your ideas originate?
I feel like I try to make cartoons come to life. I've taken ideas straight from Tom and Jerry. I'll see Tom or Jerry or Spike the bulldog, they'll do something, and I'm like, "We could do that!" The High-Five is kind of a cartoon-type idea.
Do you still get Jackass ideas even though it's finished?
Yeah, I got one the other day. Usually - say it was after Jackass 3 and I got an idea, we never knew if we were going to do another, I'd just put Jackass 4, but now that we're done, I got an idea and I'm like, "Oh shit."
What are you going to do with them?
Well, that's a whole thing, too. But I just wrote "Jackass Orphan" and emailed it to myself.
That's sad!
It gets to me, because I don't know... I think we can use them for other things, but, yeah, it is sad.
I know you love working with bulls, and it surprises me because of the damage they've done to you over the years. Why?
They're wonderful animals. They're so smart, and they absolutely hate you, and that's the best animal to shoot with because you are going to get footage. It's not even that they hate you. They hate movement. But, yeah, that is something that bothers me - that I can't shoot with bulls again, and I'm trying to get over that.
In Jackass Forever (2022) you did a stunt with a bull and you ended up getting your 16th concussion and a brain haemorrhage.
Yeah, it broke my wrist [too]. I knew when I showed up that day... because the bullring we usually shoot in, Gary Leffew's place in Nipomo, California, there's lots of soft sand. And we showed up this day [to a ring] that wasn't Gary's, it was just hard ground. And that's a problem.
What was the bull called?
Pecker Wrecker. And it was the only thing the bull didn't wreck on me.
At least there's that.
At least there's that.
Why is this the end of Jackass?
Well, Mr Wrecker erased my mind for six months afterwards, and my neurologist said, "You can't have any more concussions. You're over your limit." And, yeah, that was tough, but I heard it, right? I'm not insane. So, I had a ball doing [the new movie], but I felt like half of me was doing Jackass: Best and Last because I couldn't do the things I normally did. It was tough for me to reconcile that and it was hard on the cast too, because before I was attacking, but I would do the bigger stunts, so it all evened out. And on this one, it really wasn't even. But also, what the fuck, I look like Jamie Lee Curtis' stunt double.
It's very early days, but what does life after Jackass look like for you?
Oh man, just working with people I enjoy working with, and spending time with my kids, their last few years of high school. And I love making documentaries and films. I'll make things with the Jackass cast, but not Jackass. I've always had a fantasy about doing a heist movie with me and the Jackass cast because if anyone's less credible in pulling off a heist, it would be us.
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