Martin Kemp has shared a chilling account of a late-night ordeal in Rio de Janeiro where he genuinely believed he was about to be killed. While filming the 1994 movie Boca, the former Spandau Ballet bassist found himself face-to-face with danger when two armed men forced their way into his vehicle.
On the Travel Secrets podcast, Kemp described the terrifying experience in vivid detail. “I thought that was the end of my life,” he admitted, shaking as he recalled the event.
Having achieved fame with Spandau Ballet in the 1980s through hits like “True” and “Gold,” Kemp was no stranger to the public eye. Yet nothing had prepared him for this frightening encounter. He and a costume assistant had stopped at traffic lights in a favela during the early morning hours when two men abruptly approached their car.
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Dressed in tattered jeans and torn t-shirts with long, scruffy hair, the men’s appearance was unsettling, especially on the deserted streets. At first, Kemp ignored them — but the situation rapidly escalated.
“Suddenly, they pulled out huge magnum guns—the kind Dirty Harry would use," he recalled. “One gun went through the driver’s window, the other through mine. One man was right up against my head, shouting in Portuguese.”
Panic immediately took hold. Kemp remembered seeing two corpses earlier that week and feared his fate was sealed. “I thought, ‘I’m next. What a strange way to go—shot in Rio,’” he said.
His body trembled uncontrollably as he desperately tried to decide what to do. Finally, he pushed open the car door in an attempt to escape. But one of the attackers grabbed him, yanked him out, and threw him face-down onto the ground.
His thoughts turned to dark humor: “Hang on, I haven’t been shot yet, so it’s going okay.”
Then, unexpectedly, the man pulled Kemp up, looked him in the eye, and said: “Spandau Ballet.” He produced a scrap of paper and demanded Kemp’s signature. Still shaking, Kemp struggled to hold the pen.
The terrifying revelation soon surfaced: the two men were undercover police officers trying to extort money—something neither Kemp nor his companion had realized in the moment.
“In all my life, I’ve never been so scared,” Kemp reflected. “I genuinely thought it was the end of me. Thank God for Spandau Ballet.”
Currently, Martin Kemp is following in the footsteps of his son Roman by taking part in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here.