Will Smith's Disney+ series is full of world firsts – here’s how one explorer guided the actor through Earth’s harshest environment using cutting-edge tech

Will Smith hiking across Antarctica in the series Pole to Pole .

In the first episode of National Geographic's Pole to Pole with Will Smith expedition series, Richard Parks, a polar athlete who holds the record for skiing the greatest distance solo, unsupported, and unassisted in Antarctica and the first person of color to ski solo to the South Pole, says that his job on the show is to "keep Will alive".

With winds exceeding 70mph and temperatures dropping as low as minus 52 degrees Celsius, Antarctica is widely considered to be the harshest desert environment on Earth. That makes a filmed expedition from the South Pole to the North Pole, with a Hollywood A-lister in tow, a logistical nightmare.