Alex Honnold triumphed in his free solo climb of the Taipei 101 skyscraper on Netflix on Saturday night, but the platform had a plan in play during its entire livestream in case the climb turned tragic.
The free solo climb, of course, meant Honnold scaled the 1,667-foot-tall skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan, without the use of ropes or safety nets. The climb was originally scheduled to stream live on Friday night on Netflix, but it was postponed a half an hour before the event was supposed to start after rain slickened the structure.
By the time the rescheduled livestream began on Netflix on Saturday night (Sunday morning in Taiwan), it was sunny outside and the skyscraper was dry.
Honnold, a rock climber with 30 years of experience, is featured in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary feature Free Solo, in which he scales the 3,000-foot-high rock face of the El Capitan summit in Yosemite National Park in California. Skyscraper Live was a different challenge for Honnold, however, in that he never climbed a skyscraper before.
“I’m sure I’ll feel a little nervous at the bottom, just because it’s something totally new and I don’t know how it’s going to feel,” Honnold told Netflix Tudum ahead of the climb in an interview posted Friday. “I’ve spent 30 years climbing rock faces; this is going to be my first big handmade structure, so I’m sure it’ll feel a little different.”
Netflix’s Livestream Of ‘Skyscraper Live’ Had A 10-Second Delay
While Netflix was obviously hoping for the best outcome for Alex Honnold during Skyscraper Live, the streaming platform had taken precautions and instituted a 10-second delay with the livestream in the event turned tragic in front of viewing audiences, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“We don’t have any concerns about profanity at all, but we want to make sure that we’re responsible for our audience,” Netflix’s vice president of production for nonfiction and live programming, Jonathan Mussman, told THR. “Just in case, God forbid, right?”
Coincidentally, THR also noted on Friday, “A free fall from that height would take about 10.2 seconds with minimal air resistance,” referring to the top of the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
Also ahead of the climb, Netflix unscripted series vice president Jeff Gaspin detailed for Variety what the streamer would do in the event of a fall by Honnold, saying, “We’ll cut away. We have a 10-second delay. Nobody expects or wants to see anything like that happen. But we will cut away, and it’s as simple as that.”
While Honnold faces certain death if he falls during a free solo rock climb, he detailed for Deadline in a Jan. 18 interview the way he could survive a fall during his Taipei 101 climb.
“If something happens, I would die — though actually, on this particular building, that’s not even totally true because there are balconies every few floors,” Honnold explained to Deadline. “The geometry of the building, the shape of the building is such that you actually could fall in tons of places and not actually die, which makes it in some ways safer than a lot of rock-climbing objectives.”
An edited version of Skyscraper Live is streaming on Netflix.
Jan. 25: This story has been updated to include a quote from a Netflix representative in Variety.
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