Alex Honnold waved, posed for photos and interacted with the people inside Taipei 101, inches away, as he climbed past their windows.
Following a 24-hour weather delay, the Las Vegas rock climber successfully scaled the 1,667-foot building as part of the Netflix special “Skyscraper Live.”
No hands is crazy. @AlexHonnold #SkyscraperLIVE pic.twitter.com/twmCSX5nDS
— Netflix (@netflix) January 25, 2026
The interactions with the thousands of onlookers below and the people he passed along the way were among several showboating, rock star moments from the usually introverted Honnold as he climbed the building without a rope — the same technique he brought to the mainstream in the Oscar-winning 2018 documentary “Free Solo.”
Unlike that film from National Geographic, which chronicled Honnold becoming the first person to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan without a rope, “Skyscraper Live” clearly was a made-for-TV event. Honnold wore a microphone that picked up his running commentary. It also brought the clanging of his feet on the steel ledges into the world’s living rooms.
Not content that Honnold was risking his life with every move, “Skyscraper Live” occasionally put the live feed in a smaller picture to show videos of him at home with his wife, Sanni, and their young daughters, June and Alice. Sanni also was interviewed throughout.
Honnold paused to take questions from host Elle Duncan and commentator Seth Rollins of WWE fame.
“Honestly, it’s pretty surreal,” Honnold said during one of those breaks. “Everywhere I look, I see people watching.”
“It is very different than my usual free solo experience,” he admitted during another break when asked about posing for selfies along the way. “But you know what? It’s cool. We’re all sharing this crazy experience together.”
In the buildup to the event, numerous think pieces questioned the morality of televising such a potentially dangerous spectacle.
“Skyscraper Live” streamed on a 10-second delay in case producers needed to cut away from something horrific. “A free fall from that height would take about 10.2 seconds with minimal air resistance,” The Hollywood Reporter grimly noted.
The hype also caught the attention of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired a sketch with Mikey Day portraying Honnold.
As far as death-defying televised events go, footage of Evel Knievel’s 1967 jump over the Caesars Palace fountains is ingrained in people’s memories, but that didn’t air live. Knievel’s failed attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon seven years later, though, did.
Travis Pastrana re-created three of Knievel’s jumps, including the Caesars fountains, as part of History’s “Evel Live” in 2018.
In one of the closest parallels, Nik Wallenda completed untethered high-wire walks between Chicago skyscrapers for a 2014 Discovery Channel special also called “Skyscraper Live.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at [email protected] or 702-380-4567.