MrBeast woke up in the middle of Indiana, surrounded by cornfields and over three hundred cameras rigged across an abandoned city, and the week that followed barely slowed down from there. Most people see the finished productions and have no idea what actually goes into building the sandbox, as he put it, ‘where me and the gang can just do whatever we want.’ This is that week, unfiltered.
From a cop-chase in Indiana to a blindfolded flight to the World Cup
The week started with an elaborate production shoot in a decommissioned city in Indiana, complete with law enforcement participating in a chase sequence after a car explosion. The crew wrapped past midnight. Jimmy checked into a hotel room that had, inexplicably, a bathtub sitting in the corner of the main room, not in the bathroom, just in the corner. He had four hours before the next call time.
The following morning, running on Oreos found in the room and almost no sleep, he gathered his crew and handed them blindfolds. The challenge: he would fly them to a random location in America, and if any of them could identify where they were within five seconds of removing the blindfold, they won. They wore those blindfolds for roughly two hours through an airport, onto a plane, and off the other side, with music piped into their headphones so they couldn’t pick up audio clues. When the countdown hit one and the blindfolds came off, they were standing outside a World Cup stadium. ‘This is about to be the best day of my life,’ one of them said immediately.
At the tournament, Jimmy ran into Shakira. The exchange lasted only a few minutes, but it landed somewhere real. She wanted to build schools in Barranquilla, Colombia, for children outside the school system. He said he would love to. ‘Let’s do it,’ she said. She also told him, unprompted, that she was a fan specifically because of what he does for others, which he called ‘crazy coming from you.’
Boarding a Boosted board with Casey and calling a schoolteacher from an airport room
Back in New York for a string of back-to-back meetings, Jimmy sought out a crash course in daily vlogging from the person he credited as the originator of the format. Casey’s first piece of advice: stop opening with ‘Hey, guys’ because ‘that’s very, like, 2015 stuff.’ His second: ditch the Uber and borrow a Boosted board. Jimmy promptly lost the ability to brake and spent several blocks at speed before figuring it out. ‘He did not show me how to brake,’ he noted afterward, somehow without wiping out.
Between a commercial shoot that ended with him jumping into a pool that had just been filled with slime, a merch photoshoot, and a session with the number-one competitive eater, he found a gap. Hiding in a room at the airport so he wouldn’t trigger a crowd, he called a schoolteacher named Beth. She had posted a TikTok asking brands for help covering her students’ lunches. He had already called Old Navy. The deal: brand-new clothes for every student in her class, plus all school lunches covered for the rest of the year. ‘For the whole year?!’ she asked. ‘No student’s going hungry on me and Old Navy’s watch,’ he told her.
Ghana, a village, and five hours of sleep split across three days
The final days took place in Ghana, where construction was already underway on a school and an entire village intended to pull children out of illegal child labor. A river running through the site floods badly enough during heavy rain to cut the two halves of the community off from each other, which is why a bridge is also part of the build. Jimmy slept in a car at 3AM and was up at 8AM, no exceptions, because filming had to begin at sunrise. Dry shampoo stood in for an actual shower.
Standing on the site on the last day, he was direct: over 1.5 million children are stuck in illegal child labor, and the school and village being built around him existed because that number made him angry. ‘Kids in illegal child labor piss me off,’ he said, then immediately wondered aloud whether he was allowed to swear.
The five-year-old named Miller
Miller, age five, was the first winner of a grocery-store production where the prize was Lunchly and Beast Labs toys. He already owned the toys. He got unlimited ones.
The week that started in an abandoned Indiana city with a car explosion and a bathtub in a corner ended on a construction site in Ghana, where the roof was going on and the sun was already up, and Jimmy had about twenty minutes before the next shot.
