Social media users were puzzled on Thursday when they went to their favourite site and saw a picture of Jared Leto climbing the Empire State Building.
It got all the more confusing when a video of the 30 Seconds To Mars frontman scaling the New York Landmark was posted on the Empire State Building's Twitter. "In 1933, King Kong climbed the Empire State Building. In 2023, @JaredLeto took his place," the caption read.
After the 51-year-old reached the top, he spoke about the experience and showed off the injuries on his bloody hands that the sharp corners of the building caused.
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"I was more excited than nervous to tell you the truth," Jared said to TODAY, "But I have to be honest, it was very, very hard. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be."
"Just the endurance that it took, the stamina that it took, and it was very sharp," he continued. The Dallas Buyers Club actor had two main reasons for scaling the historic skyscraper - to cross it off his bucket list, and to announce a world tour for 30 Seconds To Mars that will go from March to September 2024.
He told TODAY: "And as a young kid, I wanted to be an artist, and New York was the place that you came to be an artist. And the Empire State Building was always that symbol for me."
The tour will promote the band's sixth studio album, It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day, which came out in September. Jared started the band with his brother Shannon Leto in 1998.
Jared started his ascend on the east side of the building, climbing from floors 86 to 104 that's over 1,300 feet (about 396 meters) above the ground. That part of his journey took about 20 minutes.
He then reached the part where the building lights up, climbing the three lighted tiers until he reached the ice shield at the base of the skyscraper's antenna. While scaling the building, he saw something that surprised him.
"I saw my mother in the window of the 80th floor, and that was a nice surprise," he said. The singer had full climbing gear and ropes attached in case he lost his grip, but thankfully he didn't need it and made it to the top in one piece. Representatives of the building said that Jared was the first person to legally scale the building, as French daredevil Alain Robert did the act illegally in 1994.