NEW YORK — The wilderness of northern Sweden, where Will Ferrell ate grilled reindeer eyeballs with adventurer Bear Grylls, seems like a long way to go to promote a movie and test-drive a television spinoff.

But that's where the two men were for 48 hours in early April, where the subzero temperatures made laughable the idea of spring. Their trip is chronicled on an episode of the Discovery Channel's "Man vs. Wild" series that debuts at 7 tonight.

Ferrell climbs out of a helicopter by rope ("Mommy!" he shouts), is eased down a cliff supported by two sticks wedged in ice, trudges through waist-deep snow on makeshift snowshoes of twigs and spends a night with Grylls in a snow cave. Dinner, and breakfast the next morning, comes from the head of a reindeer carcass found along the way.

"Nine out of 10 actors would not do that," Ferrell deadpanned in an interview with The Associated Press.

Ferrell wasn't familiar with "Man vs. Wild," probably the looniest and most entertaining series in the adventurist genre, when his manager broached the idea. But the comic actor, who has run three marathons, warmed to the idea.

"I started watching it and thought, 'this could be too crazy to say no to,"' he said.

All in the name of promotion, too: the Discovery episode airs three days before Ferrell's movie "Land of the Lost" hits the theaters. Ferrell plays a scientist who has some close encounters with dinosaurs in a time warp adventure.

Grylls stows away a Twinkie for Ferrell to get some quick energy in a pinch. Of course, the actor downs it the minute Grylls first turns his back. The episode moves along briskly with Ferrell cracking wise ("I don't know how I got myself into this. I don't even like camping."), and Grylls reminding viewers of the life-threatening conditions.

"There were times when I thought, 'I'm too tired to be funny right now. I'm too tired to be cold,"' Ferrell said.

Despite the conditions, and stunts like trying to climb a frozen waterfall, Ferrell said he never really felt in danger. His toughest trick may have been his last: Having to use a rope ladder to climb into a helicopter at the end of the adventure.

"You had to use all your arm strength to get up," he said. "By the time I clipped in, I totally let go and was hanging upside down and laughing at myself, wondering how this was going to look like. But we figured it out and the next thing I knew I was flying 600 feet in the air, hanging out of a helicopter."

Oh, and that reindeer eyeball. Does it, um, taste like chicken?

"Not even close," Ferrell said. "It's like a gelatinous piece of rock."