'Jackass' Star Steve-O Says He Canceled Surgery to Get Breast Implants for a Prank after Talking with Trans Person

Steve-O, a star of the early 2000s comedy reality show "Jackass," had an idea for a typically extreme stunt: Surgery for breast implants for use in sketch comedy gags where he would have posed as a woman. But a "heartbreaking" realization changed his mind after he had a chat with an actual transgender person: The horrific "level of oppression" that trans people face.

The surgical procedure was to have been "for hidden camera sketches that he was planning to film for his upcoming live tour, 'The Super Dummy Tour'," Vareity relays.

"The idea was for Steve-O to make himself look like a woman and then trick groups of men on the street," the entertainment news outlet adds, citing the comedian's interview with Consequence.

The entertainer was only hours away from having the surgery when the plan started to fall apart. Steve-O described how, at "10:00 PM the night before, I got a call that the anesthesiologist backed out of it, because he found out that it was me doing it as a stunt.

"And that kind of set off a chain reaction where the doctor didn't want to be associated with it anymore," the comedian added, "and they were having trouble finding another surgery center to to make it happen."

The comedian was ready to go to extra effort for the stunt. "They were talking about going to a different county and smuggling me in at six in the morning and urging me to say that it happened in Mexico," he told Consequence.

Steve-O went on to insist that that his "intention... wasn't to be hurtful to anybody. I was just trying to get laughs." The "Jackass" star went on to add, "I had done a bunch of workshop shows to test out material, and I had a number of trans people come to me after the shows to voice support" for his planned comedy bits.

But a chance conversation with a checkout clerk at a grocery store opened the comic's eyes to what transgender people have to deal with every day – and it's no joke.

After cluing him in on why "the part where I deliberately went out to trick people into thinking that I was a woman and then fooling them" wasn't such a great idea – it only reinforces the uninformed ideas cisgender people assume about trans people – the clerk filled him in on exactly what sort of legislative abuse trans people come in for in America.

The clerk, Steve-O shared, "described how they weren't allowed to use the bathroom at their place of work, that there were like maybe 28 states in the country that would arrest them for having an ID that said female on it. That there were politicians making concerted efforts to lock them up in internment camps.

"It was really pretty heartbreaking, the level of oppression that was described," the comedian added, Variety detailed.

Having heard the subject "framed like that, I thought about it in a way that I hadn't before," Steve-O added, "where you know, wow, maybe it's not all fun and games."