Bam Margera is back. After years of battling personal demons in the public eye, the iconic skater who shot to fame on MTV’s Jackass 25 years ago is skating once more.
“I took a 10-year hiatus and didn’t skate one bit,” Bam tells VGC. He’s in Hollywood, California, to promote Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, a remake of a pair of skating games he starred in over 20 years ago.
“I really had to change my ways. It was more frustrating than pleasurable even to try to skate. Cause I was an alcoholic to start. And then I was 250 pounds. And you know, with all these pills that most of them I was forced to take, all had these side effects of like weight gain, stiff muscles, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, suicidal tendencies, all that stuff.”
Bam clearly isn’t shy about discussing his challenges. Having become famous incredibly young, Margera has grown up, and grown older in the public eye. While that earned him millions of dollars and fans across the world, it also meant that when things got difficult for the Pennsylvania native, that was just as big a show as the successes.
“Like at one point, I could barely even balance enough to drop in on a three-foot ramp. But, you know, I married a stretch coach who we stretch an hour a day, and my legs are like completely 100 % again,” he said. “And now my passion is back to skate.”
Bam, 45, married Dannii Marie in 2024. On both his social media and interviews since, he says she’s the biggest catalyst for his recovery, and the reason he can still skate today. Since regaining his passion for the sport that made him famous, Bam has been documenting his progress diligently.
“So I wake up every day, get a trick on film. A trick a day keeps the sanity sane. And you know, when you do what you love and skateboarding has got me to where I am today, to be able to do that again is a true blessing.”
Aside from MTV compilations of Bam and his friends dislocating bones, another vehicle that made Margera a household name was the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise. Margera debuted in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, and remained a playable character in the franchise for a decade.
However, when it was announced that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was in development, and that Margera wouldn’t feature on the roster (the only original THPS 3 skater to be missing,) fans weren’t happy. VGC’s reporting of Margera’s absence exploded on social media, and soon the blame fell to publisher Hawk forced Activision’s hand, something Hawk himself denies. Bam explained how his last-minute inclusion in the remakes happened.
“I was in Los Angeles and I had a day off. I didn’t talk to Tony Hawk for about a year,” Bam says. “And last time he saw me, I wasn’t doing too good. So I decided to give him a call. He said he was down at the Hawk’s Nest skatepark and to stop by. I was thinking I would just say, what up? And I grabbed my skateboard. Put on some knee pads. And we wound up ollieing over each other on the big channel and he’s like, what is going on? You are back.
“I’m like, yeah, man, I’m married to a stretch coach. I’m skating every day again. You know, so he was pretty blown away by that. And, I think that, you know, really. Provoked him to make a call to Activision, knowing that there was already a deadline, but to see what kind of strings he could pull to get me back in it. Just from that special little visit.”
“I really think that they were getting a lot of heat from it,” Margera laughs. @Yeah, it’s cool and all that you’re doing a video game, but if Bam’s not in it, then I’m not playing it!”
He continues: “I do a lot of Comic-Con signings, and like 80 % of the people have a Tony Hawk game that they want me to sign. And they always tell me that I was the character that they always picked to play. So, you know it’s really cool that, you know, it’s an honor to be back in it.”
While Margera debuted in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, he is best known for his role in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. The game, which saw players embark on a world tour as part of Team Tony taking on Team Bam, was heavily influenced by Viva La Bam. Not only that, it even featured his father, Phil Margera.
“Oh yeah, you can unlock Phil and play him in his undies at 400 pounds,” Margera laughs. Phil Margera was a regular fixture of Bam’s antics in the early 2000s. Him, and his wife April, were beloved by the Jackass and Viva La Bam audiences.
“I remember we were in the studio for quite a long time, maybe even a week, just doing these voiceovers, and we had to follow a whole script. And the first game was pretty much to gnarliest because they had me in this spandex suit with all these like blue crystal balls on me. And I to skate a mini ramp and do all these tricks so they could officially track my style.”
Margera tells us that the last-minute process of being scanned for THPS 3+4 was much smoother.
“Remember back when the Matrix happened, and then he did that pause, and they showed 33 cameras going like this and that. We thought that was a completely incredible high-tech kit. Now there’s a globe in Activision with like 167 cameras all around you that can scan you up, down and all around. And I’ve done a lot of Hollywood things in my time, but this was the most high-tech thing I’ve ever seen.
“To the point where they scanned me so good that if you zoom in close enough, you can read the credit card information tattooed on my hand. And I was like, getting ready to get a whole bunch of random bills of people hijacking my credit card because they read it as my character.”
When we chat about whether he’d come back for a Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 remake, or be up for appearing in potential future games, Bam is unequivocal.
“I would love to be, yeah… [THUG 2] I’m not just saying this, it’s the most fun game there is to play. You could skate on anything, and the tricks are endless. And most games are, you know, race car games, which are fun, but you’re driving around in a circle trying to win. Sports games where you’re trying to hit a goal back and forth, and you already know the outcome. You make a goal, and then you get a point.”
Margera says that copies of Tony Hawk games are the items he’s asked to sign most. He also tells us that fans constantly want to talk to him about Viva La Bam, his Jackass spin-off which ran from 2003 until 2005. The premise, as the title sequence explained, was that MTV would give Bam a blank cheque to do “Whatever the fuck I want,” in his words.
While this could often mean turning his kitchen into a pirate-themed bar, or building a tree-top casino in the local woods, Viva La Bam would also have a focus on skating, and feature many of the biggest pros of the day.
“Viva La Bam, when that came out, had 65 episodes with a $300,000 budget per week to blow stuff up, fly people in and fly people out, and base a lot of things on skateboarding that actually got a lot of new people wanting to skateboard for the first time or again. The same thing was happening with the game.
“There are these tricks that you could do even on the first Tony Hawk game, these lines of like kick flip, crooked grind to manual to tre flip to front board to nose manual to dolly flip out, which would be impossible on any real skateboard where the skater is doing it. But you know, skaters are getting so good these days. And I think because of the game, people go out and think that these things are possible.
“I have gone through Instagram sometimes, and I’ve seen such combos that they’re actually making the real Tony Hawk game possible in real life with these tricks. Somebody did a Nollie flip, crooked grind to nose manual to Nollie flip out. I’m like, this is Tony Hawk game shit.
“Like, if this, if you had shown me this in 1985, my head would have popped off because my mind would have been blown.”
In the mid-2000s, every company wanted a piece of Margera, which made us wonder, were there ever any discussions to develop a Viva La Bam game when the series was at its peak?
“There might have been talks, but they tried to do a Jackass video game that I really couldn’t because I was already obligated to be in the Tony Hawk game and I had some kind of contract,” Margera recalls.
“So they did a Jackass game without me that did not do very well. So I think that when it got mentioned, we kind of realized that the Jackass one didn’t do as well as we thought so we never continued with that.”
The Jackass game Bam is referring too was a collection of themed minigames starring most of the crew from the original series and films. The game currently holds a Metacritic score of 58. Bam’s video game debut, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, is the seventh highest-rated video game of all time, with a score of 97 on the site.
In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, Bam appears as he looks now. He’s older, has more tattoos, and is sporting a leather suit and stark pink shirt. He’s also wearing a necklace featuring a Heartagram, the logo of the Finnish rock band HIM, which Bam made famous via its inclusion on his merchandise, and famously on his Westchester, Pennsylvania home, “Castle Bam”.
“You know, some people who don’t do research are like, ‘is Bam trying to steal the Heartagram?’ No!, I’m trying to represent the Heartagram. I have it on my front door so people could do some research and find out it’s the logo of my favorite band from Finland called HIM.
“At one point, the label would get kind of upset and not know how to handle it because when you have 65 episodes on Viva La Bam constantly on rerun on MTV and my front door’s a Heartagram, then people are gonna start thinking it’s mine. But what do you want me to do? Not have one? Do you want me to put a Linkin Park poster on it instead? Like, I’m trying to promote the band that you signed, and you’re getting mad at me because I’m repping the Heartagram too much? Come on. Crazy.”
Bam’s love of music is as inherent to him as his love of skating. CKY, the series of stunt videos created by Bam and his friends, featured the music of HIM, CKY, The 69 Eyes, Hanoi Rocks, and more. These videos, which would later come to the UK in the form of DVD multipacks that were difficult to track down even at the time, were a mixtape of Bam’s life, and introduced these bands to the world.
We wanted to know what Bam is listening to now, and what he thinks should be included in a future Tony Hawk soundtrack.
“There’s a band called The Black Capes from Greece that is really good, and they have a new album called Looks Like Death. There’s another called Sad Dolls. I know they recorded in Finland, but I don’t know if they’re from Finland, but I really like them. money
“I love Yelawolf, of course. Every time I see Yelawolf live, I always come up and sing a song with him. So, I’ve known him for a really long time, but it would be nice to see Yelawolf have a track on a Tony Hawk game one day.”
Margera not only listens to a lot of music, but he’s also written and performed with several bands over the years. Music’s connection to skating as a sport is undeniable, and it’s something that was strengthened through the likes of skating video games, and skate videos of the early 2000s. To Bam, the music featured in these projects is just as important as the tricks themselves.
“A skateboarder works for probably a year it takes to create a three-minute video part of all your best tricks, and you have to pick your favorite song to put on your video. A lot of times, people these days are saving money because they don’t want to pay for like a cool Metallica song or a band that’s signed to a label that wants money. So they just use some really generic song that makes your entire part look generic.
“If your song sucks on your video part, then your video part sucks. Picture a Bam video part, you’re expecting to hear HIM or CKY or something, but I put on Billy Ray Cyrus. ‘Yeah, but look at the tricks. ‘ I don’t care about the tricks. Either shut this audio off or shut the whole thing off because it’s ruined.
“Music is everything to me. And that’s why I had such a passion to find new bands to put in, you know, whether it’s a video game or CKY videos, because, you know, I always wanted to find new music. So when you hear that song, you think of a CKY video.
“You think of Enter Sandman, you have already seen their music video, you have already heard it at the football game. So you’re already reminded about that song. And for me to use Enter Sandman in a CKY video just would not seem right. I like to use brand new music of bands that no one’s ever heard before to have a whole new outlook on the song. And it’s only reminding them of skateboarding.”
As we concluded our interview, we asked how it felt to see such widespread public support around his inclusion in the game, and what it meant to see so many fans share how important he was to them.
“It felt really good to be back in the game because, you know, just to feel really hopeless about not ever knowing if I’m going to get sober and if I’m going to die this way and, you know, my legs are dry rot of rubber bands and I can’t even skate anyway as it is, you kind of lose all hope.
“When you don’t have a purpose in life, then you can get really, really depressed. And I was there. So now that that’s all gone and that dark era of my life is done and over with. Now I wake up looking forward to what I’m gonna do today and what skate trick I’m gonna get. I hope it’s really inspiring for others to think that, ‘hey man, if Bam could do it, I could do it because Bam’s been hell and back’”
While Bam’s inclusion in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is a big moment for fans of the game, his inclusion and the personal battles he fought to get there are the real story. At one point, virtually every teenager thought Bam Margera was the coolest person on the planet. To see him struggle for so long was difficult, and at its darkest, it felt like it was never going to improve.
“A lot of people thought that I wasn’t gonna make it,” Bam grins. “People were taking bets on me like, was he gonna die this week or next week?”
Hours after our interview, Bam posts a video of himself at a local skatepark, grinning from ear to ear. Bam Margera is back.
