On a recent episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, the actor revealed that he was once held at knifepoint in an NYC subway station.
He explained that the incident took place before the COVID-19 pandemic, while he was on his way to pick up his daughter from school: “It was pretty insane. I realized I had gotten way, way too comfortable in the city. My guard was down…I was all the way at the end of the subway.”
“Innately, I would just go all the way down to the end. I felt somebody coming up. I thought, Oh they want to take a photo or something. As I turned, I’m up against the post like it’s The French Connection or some shit, and I turned. I looked down, and I see a knife.”
“I have my headphones on the whole time. I can’t hear anything. I’m just listening to music. So it’s scored, the whole thing was scored,” he said while laughing. “I look up, I see the person’s eyes, and I’m taken by how young they are.”
“I just started booking, just started running," he continued. "I jumped over the turnstile, hid around the white, tiled entrance to the subway, took my phone out. He jumped over, running away. I took a photo of him."
"Then I chased him up the stairs. He started running up Seventh Avenue. I took two more photographs of him. I ran down two police officers in an SUV, showed them the photograph...[they were] like, ‘Are you stabbed?’ I was like, ‘No, no.’ He was like, ‘Check to see if you’re stabbed.’"
"What happens is people get stabbed and they’re in shock. I looked to see if he was right." Luckily, Cooper wasn't stabbed, and he headed back to go pick up his daughter.
