‘Jackass: Best – Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O say the final ‘Jackass’ movie, ‘Best and Last,’ is ending for practical reasons tied to Knoxville’s injuries—while the film blends new stunts with archival footage that the crew previously cut as too reckless. In theaters June 26,
When the assistant director called “All right, that’s a wrap,” Johnny Knoxville thought the moment would pass like any other. Then they handed him a megaphone—one last chance to speak—and he started weeping.
Knoxville is 55 now. and the final movie in the “Jackass” franchise lands in theaters June 26 with “Jackass: Best and Last. ” a sendoff that arrives after nearly 26 years since the crew began on MTV in 2000. The film is also. by design. a split personality: roughly half brand-new stunts and the other half archival material. including best bits from earlier movies and older footage that never made it onto the show.
The question for fans isn’t just what they’ll see. It’s why the ride is stopping.
Steve-O, 52, frames it bluntly. “It really boils down to Knoxville not being able to stand in front of bulls anymore.” He calls it “almost that simple.”
The turning point traces back to a stunt during “Jackass Forever,” when Knoxville was struck by a bull. He suffered a concussion and, as he put it, it was “pretty intense” and took “six, seven months to recover from.” The injury led to a brain hemorrhage and cognitive decline.
Knoxville says he doesn’t want that again—either for himself or for his family. “I don’t want to go through that again, nor put my family through that again,” he says. Still, ending the franchise was hard. “I can’t do the larger stunts anymore, and I’m still reconciling that. For the large part, that’s OK. I’ve done enough. But part of me is still having trouble with that. … It’s like putting to rest a side of you. It was time, but it’s tough.”.
In “Best and Last,” that change shows on screen. Knoxville largely takes a back seat. allowing others to handle most of the new stunts while he serves more often as a master of ceremonies. He admits that shift wasn’t comfortable. “I felt like half of me in this film, and I didn’t like it,” he says. “It’s tough to sit back and host while everyone else is having fun.”.
Steve-O, meanwhile, steps into the role of pushing the edge. He says he came in ready to “be gnarlier than ever. ” and the new stunts in “Best and Last” include a disgusting game involving laxatives that had him “violently barfing. ” along with a scene where he gets a prostate exam from a robot. In those moments, the comedy comes with a message.
Both stunts give Steve-O a platform to talk to fans about prostate health and colonoscopies, which he calls potentially lifesaving. “It’s such a great opportunity … to frame this art in the context of middle age,” he says. “We’re at an age where cancer screening is so important.”
For Steve-O, the ending didn’t quite land while the cameras were rolling. He says he didn’t have “the ability to really feel sad about it being the end because I’m so grateful that we got to do it at all.” He also felt a little ahead of schedule. saying he already thought “Jackass Forever” would be the last movie—making this one an “unexpected bonus.”.
Then the set’s final day arrived. For both men, it carried a weight that didn’t feel like a punchline.
Steve-O remembers it as heavy. “That day had a heaviness,” he says. “There were a lot of tears. There were a lot of hugs. There was a lot of gratitude.” For Knoxville, the emotion showed in the moment the film wrapped—before he even had time to think about the longer goodbye.
The archival portion of “Best and Last” revisits the kind of risk the crew once considered too reckless to air. Among the previously cut bits is a shocking scene of Knoxville shooting himself in the chest with a real gun while wearing a bulletproof vest. The film also includes older footage in which Knoxville tested self-defense equipment on himself; a version of that stunt appeared in the first episode of the MTV show.
Knoxville says revisiting that kind of history brought him back to the early realization that helped shape what “Jackass” became. “I didn’t realize I had just changed my life,” he says. He points to a part where you can see him realize he was on to something with the idea that led to “Jackass.” “That moment touches me.”.
Some of the older stunts underscore how close the crew has come to disaster across the years. In one archival bit. a police officer pulls a gun on Knoxville while he pretends to be an escaped prisoner at a hardware store. Knoxville says the cop later told him she was prepared to “put a bullet in my ear” if he had moved an inch.
He sums it up simply: “I, and we, have been very lucky.”
Watching the franchise highlights again, Knoxville says he went through a “myriad” of emotions. That included revisiting scenes with the late “Jackass” cast member Ryan Dunn, who died in a car crash in 2011. Knoxville describes the way Dunn’s humor still hits hard after the laughter. “Sometimes you’ll watch it. and you’re just in awe of how funny and at the same time sweet he was and hilariously grumpy he was. ” Knoxville says. “And then you miss him, and that hits you right in the face and the heart.”.
At the heart of “Jackass,” Steve-O says, is something that has helped it last. Despite how inappropriate and vile the franchise can look to outsiders, it was built around friends making one another laugh. “There’s nothing hateful,” he says. “There’s nothing mean-spirited. I think that’s why it’s aged so well, and why it endured for as long as it did.”.
In the end, “Jackass: Best and Last” isn’t just about what comes next—or even just what ends. It’s about the final proof that the crew knew when to pull back, even as the stunts kept their promise of chaos, discomfort, and hard-won survival.
Jackass: Best and Last Johnny Knoxville Steve-O MTV Jackass Forever Ryan Dunn stunt injury concussion brain hemorrhage prostate health colonoscopies cancer screening box office entertainment news