Bear Grylls says Matthew McConaughey “always had a smile on his face” during ‘Running Wild’ — even when they were eating reindeer balls

Survivalist extraordinaire Bear Grylls is taking on the great outdoors with actor Matthew McConaughey in the Season 9 premiere of FOX’s Bear Grylls is Running Wild.

According to McConaughey, he and Grylls have been trying to team up for this show for nearly two decades. Grylls told DECIDER that he first met McConaughey not long after the latter married his wife in 2012. “There was always a nice connection, and he always said, ‘I’m definitely going to do the show. I really want to do it,’” Grylls recalled. “Sometimes, with the guests, it takes a few seasons. It takes a while to get the stars to align. But he was true to his word.”

After many years of friendship, McConaughey finally joined Grylls on a glacier in Norway, where they swam through freezing-cold lakes, rappelled from tall cliffs, and ate reindeer balls. YUP, you read that correctly. Following a long day of daring activities, the two adventure-seekers set up camp with a couple of tents and a thermos of raw reindeer testicles, which they boiled over a self-started fire.

“[McConaughey] said, ‘I’m bringing a hip flask,’” Grylls recalled, noting that the flask was filled with the actor’s Pantalones Tequila brand. “He brought some of that, which was great. I said, ‘I’ll supply the food.’ I brought some reindeer testicles.”

In the episode, the men cringed over the smell of the raw meat, with Grylls explaining that he “underdelivered” in comparison to the Texan T-bone steaks McConaughey served him and his family when they last got togther.

“I mean, it’s not great,” Grylls told us of the unconventional cuisine. “What do they call them? Rocky Mountain oysters? That’s kind of like the sanitized version of it. We had a slightly more raw version of it. But again, [McConaughey’s] got such a great way about him. And he was all in. He’d go, ‘Bring it on.’”

McConaughey is no stranger to leaving his comfort zone. The actor wrote in his Greenlights memoir about engaging in a wrestling match with a local boxing champion when he was traveling through West Africa in the late 1990s, and living with an Australian family as an exchange student in his young adulthood. Because of his laid-back attitude and thirst for new experiences, it’s no surprise that he took on each challenge with Grylls in stride.

“It was cold. It was actually a tough journey. You see what people are like after a day or so when everyone’s cold and tired and wet, and you’ve got to get in another freezing glacial lake and swim across this thing,” Grylls said. “He was great. He was tough. He always had a smile on his face. He said, ‘Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and go, ‘Alright, let’s do it. Here we go.’’ But it was a privilege to journey with him.”

Part of that journey, of course, included some reflection on McConaughey’s storied career. With nature as his backdrop, the Oscar-winning actor shared stories about his early days in the industry, and how he came up with his iconic “alright, alright, alright” line in Dazed and Confused.

“He’s one of those people, who, whatever he says, he can make it sound epic,” Grylls said. “Also, in terms of storytelling, there’s no better storyteller on the planet. Therefore, if you’re going to go into the back country with someone, there’s no one more fun in that sense.” 

“He’s got so many of those stories, and each of them better than the last,” Grylls added. “When I saw the final edit, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s so many.’ We could have done about three episodes just with him.”

Bear Grylls is Running Wild airs Tuesday nights at 9/8c on FOX. New episodes are available to stream the next day on Hulu.