Despite since finding love again, to which he credits his sustained sobriety<\/a>, along with a series of psychedelic trips and vomit-inducing rituals with the secretions of an Amazonian frog, he declined to attend the film\u2019s premiere \u2014 still bruised by his acrimonious axing from the production of the previous film Jackass Forever.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll definitely check out the movie, and I hope it\u2019s good, but as far as a reunion, it\u2019s not going to happen, not in 10 million years,\u201d says Margera, who has face tattoos, four nose rings, and a trimmed goatee. He\u2019s also wearing oversized designer sunglasses with gold medallions at the hinges. \u201cI don\u2019t have any bad blood with the cast of Jackass,\u201d he continues.\u201cIt\u2019s just the decisions that Johnny Knoxville<\/a> and [Jackass director] Jeff Tremaine decided to make. I never want to see them ever again in my life. Enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The roots of the fall-out stretch back to 2019, before filming for the franchise\u2019s fourth feature instalment began, when Margera signed a wellness agreement with the producers which committed him to sobriety amid his struggles with alcoholism. To ensure he was maintaining his end of the bargain, he had to take breathalyzer tests three times a day, urine tests twice a week, and have his hair follicles regularly screened, according to a subsequent<\/a> lawsuit. \u201cI already knew they were setting me up to fail,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In August of that year, he was kicked off<\/a> a plane for allegedly being too drunk, but at times Margera seemed intent on recovery, even appearing on<\/a> The Dr. Phil Show and professing to be sober, only taking his prescription Adderall for ADHD. \u201cI never drank until I was like 22,\u201d he told<\/a> the celebrity doctor. \u201cJackass is a one-take Jake. You\u2019re on a roof with a shopping cart and there\u2019s a bush. You can\u2019t land that, you\u2019re going to eat shit no matter what. So give me a few shots of tequila. OK, I feel pretty numb. Shove me off the son of a bitch.\u201d <\/p>\n Things started to seriously unravel a few months into filming for Jackass Forever mid-2020. \u201cThey put me up at some shady hotel with a guy out front to make sure I didn\u2019t leave to go get alcohol,\u201d Margera says. \u201cI wound up on set once, and they\u2019re just like, \u2018Piss into this cup.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sobriety agreement<\/a> ended in controversy. In August 2020, Paramount fired<\/a> Margera after he was accused<\/a> of taking unprescribed amphetamines, which he insisted were prescribed. \u201cTo tell somebody that after doing all that, thinking that you\u2019re going to get $5 million, then say you\u2019re not in the movie, and you\u2019re not getting $5 million \u2014 I mean, I watched Dateline, and people kill other people for a whole lot less,\u201d says Margera. \u201cI was very fucking angry.\u201d That anger curdled into a call for fans to boycott<\/a> the movie, a lawsuit against<\/a> Paramount, Knoxville, Tremaine, and others, alleging \u201cinhumane\u201d and \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d treatment over his Jackass Forever axing, as well as even attempting to get the movie cancelled, and alleged threats<\/a> against Tremaine which led the director to win a restraining order against Margera, who said<\/a> he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder months prior.<\/p>\n In their response to Margera\u2019s lawsuit, lawyers for Paramount wrote<\/a> that they had tried to \u201chelp Margera by attempting to include him in the movie on the condition that he stay sober and take steps to save his own life\u2026. Within a few months, the wheels came off, and Margera committed multiple breaches: He stopped regularly taking his mandatory alcohol tests, he broke off communications with his treatment team, he dodged a drug test, and he used illicit drugs again.\u201d (The case was eventually settled<\/a>. Paramount declined to comment for this story.)<\/p>\n Co-star Steven \u201cSteve-O\u201d Glover wrote on Instagram at the time<\/a>: \u201cEveryone bent over backwards to get you in the movie, and all you had to do was not get loaded. You\u2019ve continued to get loaded, it\u2019s that simple. We all love you every bit as much as we all say we do, but nobody who really loves you can enable or encourage you to stay sick.\u201d In a recent interview<\/a>, Knoxville said he understood why Margera had felt abandoned: \u201cWe did draw a hard line. And we did it out of, \u2018This is our chance to really help him\u2019 \u2026 As long as he\u2019s thriving and he\u2019s healthy, that\u2019s all I care about. Selfishly, I would love him to be in my life again. But that\u2019s on his own time.\u201d<\/p>\n After leaving Jackass Forever, Margera\u2019s life for the next two years was defined by a controversial conservatorship<\/a> \u2014 that he says he was entered into against his will \u2014 with a woman who had developed a virtual reality and biofeedback regimen to treat addiction. This made him, as he puts it, \u201cthe Britney Spears of Jackass.\u201d The story was featured in an episode of HBO Max\u2019s The Curious Case Of\u2026 documentary series last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThis lady named Lima [Jevremovic] talked my parents into sending her $150,000, which pretty much gave her the funds to lock me up,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a really dark time, and I never want to think about her name again.\u201d Jevremovic sued him for defamation in December<\/a> but a judge threw out the case, citing that it hadn\u2019t been filed in the correct jurisdiction. (Jevremovic\u2019s company Autonomous User Rehabilitation Agent did not return a call. She did not respond to a request for comment via her Instagram.) Margera ended up doing two and a half years in rehab after being caught in what is known as \u201cthe Florida shuffle\u201d in which some treatment centers are alleged to keep insured patients in a constant cycle of rehab.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in 13 different treatment centers, 90-days apiece, back to back, and they put me on 18 different pills, which led to weight gain, stiff muscles, hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and suicidal tendencies. I couldn\u2019t even cry or cum,\u201d says Margera. The sum of money his insurance racked up, Margera claims, amounted to \u201cthe funny number\u201d of $666,000. \u201cI felt completely hopeless and defeated. Any little thing that I did would just lock me up for another 90 days.\u201d At the same time his bank account \u201cpretty much dwindled down to close to nothing\u201d amid a custody battle<\/a> with his then-wife Nikki Boyd, and the lawsuit against Paramount and his former Jackass co-stars.<\/p>\n Margera says the stress of it all almost killed him in December 2022. \u201cI pretty much went into five seizures at 20 minutes apiece,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI woke up eight days later on life support<\/a> with a tube down my throat with Covid and pneumonia, and that was pretty much my last straw.\u201d So he prayed to God for the first time in his life. \u201cI never really believed,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m like, you know what, I\u2019m gonna do it, \u2018Dear God, please let me die. And if I wake up tomorrow, fuck you, but you better deliver me the hottest eye candy with a tan pit bull to save me now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n TO UNDERSTAND HOW MARGERA ENDED UP caught in the Florida shuffle and then praying for his life in a hospital bed, you have to go back to the beginning. Long before YouTube, TikTok, and Mr Beast, there was Margera. Before everything was \u201ccontent,\u201d there were grainy VHS tapes of an anarchic teenage prankster from West Chester, Pennsylvania, skateboarding on freight trains<\/a>, destroying rental cars<\/a>, and attacking his long-suffering dad Phil in slapping fits. <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t called creating content back then. Margera was just making skate videos interspersed with funny moments, which itself was pioneering, with his CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) crew. The fast-paced, dopamine-fueled formula \u2014 with a cast of recurring characters shepherded by a charismatic ringleader, escalating stunts, and the sense that viewers were watching an authentic group of friends \u2014 would become the blueprint that many on the internet later followed. <\/p>\n The CKY videos were instrumental in laying the foundations for Jackass, which exploded onto MTV in 2000 and turned skateboarding\u2019s enfant terrible into one of the few skateboarders to ever become a genuine household name. In a whirlwind rise to stardom, 2002\u2019s Jackass: The Movie led to his own show Viva La Bam, which aired on MTV from 2003 to 2005. Over five seasons, Margera took his antics across the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and Europe, convinced almost his entire town not to feed his dad, Phil, reenacted the civil war with 200 soldiers, clung to a hot-air balloon as it lifted into the sky<\/a>, and turned his family home into a skatepark.<\/p>\n At Margera\u2019s peak he was starring in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, appearing in commercials for Right Guard, driving luxury cars, and living the sort of jetset life that seemed unimaginable for someone who had dropped out of school on the first day of 10th grade. Jackass Number Two was released in 2006. While they were filming, Margera spent a night in jail. \u201cI got arrested for having brass knuckles at the LAX airport, drunk as hell, and I got a felony charge,\u201d he says. His co-stars, Margera claims, \u201chigh-fived me for good press.\u201d<\/p>\n The run-up to his first marriage was then the subject of MTV series Bam\u2019s Unholy Union in 2007, and Iggy Pop played at the wedding party in Philadelphia before the newlyweds honeymooned in Dubai. Sipping champagne on camera in a penthouse hotel suite, the unlikely countercultural icon was in his imperial era.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, I\u2019m stoked when kids say I watched your CKY video but moms at Comic Con will say, \u2018I just want to know, my son got hurt imitating you,\u2019\u201d says Margera. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Well, I got hurt imitating me. What do you want me to say?\u2019 I broke every bone in my body more than once. But yeah, it\u2019s rad, you know. A lot of people, they all say now, Bam was YouTube before YouTube.\u201d<\/p>\n But the same fame that made Margera rich slowly unmoored him. He woke up one day and felt like he had nothing left to strive for. \u201cI was looking out of my driveway staring at a purple Lamborghini, a blue Lamborghini, a red Ferrari, a Porsche Panamera Silver, a black Audi R8, two Bentleys, two Range Rovers, two Hummers, a 1928 Mercedes, and a fucking DeLorean, and I\u2019m like, I have run out of wishes and goals, I have nothing more to prove to anybody,\u201d he recalls. <\/p>\n Despite the 2010 box office success ofJackass 3D, his spiral was worsened by the death of his best friend and Jackass co-star Ryan Dunn in a car crash the following year. \u201cI started to drink to forget,\u201d he says. \u201cI never stepped on a skateboard for literally 10 years.\u201d He would \u201cwake up throwing up barf and bile and crack open a beer just to cure the hangover, and then continue to do that all day \u2026 It was so bad that I didn\u2019t think that I could stop anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n During that time, up until his ill-fated involvement in Jackass Forever, he hosted Bam\u2019s Bad Ass Game Show for a season on TBS, toured extensively as vocalist with his band Fuckface Unstoppable<\/a>, and continued to orbit the celebrity world. His son Phoenix was born in 2017. \u201cEverybody\u2019s like, because you [tormented] your dad, Phoenix is gonna do that to you, and I\u2019m totally cool with that,\u201d he says. \u201cPhoenix made me fight for myself to save my own life because I need to be here for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Conventional rehab wasn\u2019t the only thing Margera tried, either. In December 2020, shortly after the movie dispute erupted, he took a series of psychedelic trips that he believes were a key part of his healing journey \u2014 even if he relapsed afterwards. He did seven ceremonies in Escondido with a man he calls \u2018the shaman wizard\u2019, consuming psilohuasca<\/a> \u2014 a combination of psilocybin mushrooms and harmala, which is part of the ayahuasca brew. \u201cYou go through every single emotion at one point or another during the ceremony. You just think about the spider web of events that led to my downfall, and you get really depressed, and then you get really happy again, and then you just kind of figure out who you actually are. It helped me extremely.\u201d<\/p>\n He also tried kambo, a poisonous frog secretion known for its apparently detoxifying, vomit-inducing effects. \u201cYour face puffs up like a big red football, and you barf out every tar and toxin known to man,\u201d Margera says.<\/p>\n WHETHER COINCIDENCE, FATE, OR UNANSWERED prayer, months after he survived the seizures, pneumonia, and Covid, Margera walked to the pool bar at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles and ordered a Bloody Mary. By then he was divorced from Boyd and, there, in June 2023, he overheard a woman who caught his attention. \u201cI instantly heard this girl, \u2018Listen, I\u2019m 43 Sicilian and Irish. I was born in Jersey.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m 43, I\u2019m Sicilian and Irish. I was born in Philly, over the bridge [from New Jersey], who the hell is that?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd I see the hottest ass chick, and I\u2019m like, \u2018What the fuck? I gotta go talk to her.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Dannii Marie, a tall brunette, told him she was a stretch coach, and they hit it off. Soon, she invited him to walk her dog with her. \u201cI was like, \u2018What kind of dog do you have? She said, \u2018A tan pit bull. Why?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Thank you, God.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n In October of that year he was down on one knee, and by May 2024 they were married. Reading his vows, Margera credited her<\/a> as being instrumental in him finally getting sober and being able to reach his previous heights on a skateboard thanks to her stretching regimen. <\/p>\n He was with Dannii Marie at a restaurant in Ocala, Florida, last year when The Curious Case of\u2026 Bam Margera<\/a> premiered on Investigation Discovery. \u201cI was like, \u2018What the fuck, I never approved this, turn this shit up!\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cLuckily, it pretty much exposed how fucked up it was of Lima becoming my guardian without my permission or consent.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Bam_1.jpg?w=1024\"\/)
Margera sneaking up on his dad, Phil, in a segment from the MTV show Jackass.<\/strong>MTV<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Bam_4.jpg?w=1024\"\/)
Margera (left) with Ryan Dunn, who died in a car crash in 2011.<\/strong>MTV<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Jackass-Movie-.jpg?w=1024\"\/)
Johnny Knoxville and Margera in 2002\u2019s Jackass: The Movie.<\/strong>\u00a9Paramount\/Everett Collection<\/p>\n