The reality star turned motivational speaker and best-selling author exclusively reveals to ET that he will take flight in 2025.
3…2…1 blast off! Ben Nemtin of MTV's The Buried Life is going to space. The reality star turned motivational speaker and best-selling author exclusively reveals to ET that he will take flight in 2025 to raise awareness for mental health.
The announcement marks a major milestone for The Buried Life franchise, a 100-item bucket list Nemtin and his three friends Dave Lingwood, Duncan Penn, and Jonnie Penn created in 2006 that inspired the hit MTV Show The Buried Life. The show ran for two seasons in 2010 and is currently MTV’s highest-rated show on iTunes and Amazon. It followed the friends as they crossed items off their bucket lists — such as "Play Basketball with Obama," "Tell A Joke On Late Night Television" and "Ask Out The Girl Of Your Dreams (Taylor Swift)." The final item on their original list is "#100: Go To Space."
Nemtin will be going into the stratosphere with the space tourism company Worldview. The trip will take five to eight hours with a two-hour ascent before floating over the Earth for two to four hours followed by a 90-minute descent where passengers will gently land. With the rise in adventure tourism, the recent Titan Submersible accident is top of mind for Nemtin who says, “That was a total tragedy, and my heart goes out to all those folks' families." However, it hasn't deterred him from embarking on his daring journey because he says, "Worldview is working with NASA and the FAA to confirm that it will not go up until it is safe to do so." Nemtin is also inclined to lean into any fears, "I know that fear is not a bad thing because it just comes with doing something that's important to you. So the key is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable by pushing through that fear," he says.
The reality star wants this trip to space to inspire people to focus on their mental health. "I want to spread awareness that it's okay to not be okay sometimes and that it's really okay to ask for help," he says. He hopes that this trip will prove that anyone "can achieve the impossible when they decide what they want to do and start taking intentional steps towards it."
As far as what’s next, he reveals to ET that there is a documentary in the works that will follow the entire story of Nemtin's Buried Life, including his voyage to space. "I want to spark this thing inside of people so that they go after their dreams. When you do the things you love, you inspire other people to do the things that they love, and that creates a ripple effect. And that's really the big message," he says.
Here's a look back at some of his most iconic bucket list items -- including all the details about what really went into pulling them off!
Tell A Joke On Late Night Television
The foursome's antics never got them into any legal trouble, but Nemtin says, "When we were younger we definitely pushed the envelope and kind of pissed some people off." The group almost got kicked out of Jimmy Kimmel Live! when they tried to accomplish #19 on their list "Tell a Joke on Late Night." When the Staff heard their plan "they were not happy about it" and the group ended up crossing that item off on Telemundo.
Do A Sketch With Will Ferrell
When doing a sketch with Will Ferrell, Nemtin and his buddies got off on a technicality. Telling ET that the group ran into Ferrell at a Seattle Seahawks game and couldn’t "do a proper comedy sketch with him because he's sitting there with his family who's enjoying the game. So we thought what if we do it differently where we just draw a sketch with Will Ferrell because technically, that's doing a sketch," saying that once they proposed the idea to Ferrell "he actually thought that was hilarious so he drew a drawing of the Seattle Seahawks," and they crossed this item off their list.
Accept a Dare
For this one the group requested fans send in their dares and vote on their favorite, with "Steal A Lock Of Robert Pattinson’s Hair" taking the top spot. This was right around the Twilight craze and Nemtin shares that they had to corner Pattinson in the Los Angeles SOHO House to steal a lock of his hair, saying that the Twilight star "was super awkward," but handed over a piece.
Ask Out The Girl Of Your Dreams
Nemtin and his pals had to try this bucket list item twice. With Nemtin failing to ask out the girl of his dreams, Megan Fox, on the Transformers red carpet saying "I totally choked up, I was talking with her, and before I could ask her out her publicist pulled her away, I blew it and I didn't ask her out." However, his co-star Duncan Penn asked out Taylor Swift at the CMT Awards and Swift actually said yes. All these years later Nemtin confesses that Penn and Swift "ended up going out on a date or two" and when asked why it didn’t work out he shares that it "just wasn't in the cards," Nemtin says. With Swift single again after her recent break up with Joe Alwyn, anything is possible.
Play Basketball with Obama
Nemtin confesses to ET that they tried to play Basketball with Obama and says they "got like a hundred no's, and everyone told us it was a dumb idea. It was so unexpected, we just got invited to the White House to do a tour and President Obama surprised us on the basketball court." Nemtin said that Obama was "one of the coolest people on earth" and was "just so disarming, so genuine." Going on to say that Obama was a "very good basketball player, and he just made you feel super comfortable so I actually forgot he was the President. We're shooting around with them. And all of a sudden I'm trying to block his shots. We're talking trash. I was like, I better not block it, this is the President. There's probably Secret Service hiding in the bushes that are going to tackle me."
Have a beer with Prince Harry
Nemtin explains to cross #6 off the list that he and his pals just wrote a letter to Prince Harry's office and ended up "having dinner with him" and hung out for a couple of hours. Nemtin discloses that the Duke of Sussex was “just very genuine and very, very cool, and it was very clear that he really cared about his philanthropic work,” says the former reality TV star. This was before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle started dating, but Nemtin tells ET that it was “not surprising he met someone like Megan because he was just a very down to Earth Person.” Even comparing Prince Harry to Obama in the sense that he was just very genuine.
Be a guest on Oprah
Nemtin and his buddies went on the show to promote MTV’s The Buried Life, even presenting Oprah with her own bucket list based on things she said she wanted to do on the show. Nemtin shares that going on Oprah was super intimidating and she was "definitely the best interviewer," says Nemtin. Telling ET that it was a surreal experience and he even brought his parents to the show "which was really meaningful."
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