About eight years ago, Tracy Morgan got into a horrible traffic accident. A Walmart truck crashed into a minibus in which he was traveling, causing a chain reaction crash. The accident killed his friend and collaborator, James McNair. Morgan spent two weeks in a coma, along with suffering multiple injuries. He eventually returned to showbiz, but his recovery wasn’t easy, as he recently told Conan O’Brien on his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
Morgan recalled the first time he did showbiz after his accident, after he returned to SNL in October of 2015, about a year and a half after it happened. (It took him almost a year to do his first interview.) “I was hosting Saturday Night Live and at rehearsals, I decided that night, let’s go to The [Comedy] Cellar,” he recalled. “I grabbed the mic, and I remember it felt so good to be welcomed back. It really did. And that day, I didn’t think I was ever going to touch the microphone again.”
At this point, Morgan broke down, crying as he recounted how nervous he was to go back to performing. “I didn’t think I was going to walk again, and I did. I just fought,” he said. “I fought to come out of the coma. I’d seen my daughter in the coma saying ‘daddy come back’ and she was only ten months and I fought and came out of the coma. Then I just wanted to be better.”
One of the issues is that he was worried he wouldn’t be able to bring it like he had before. “Bones heal but when you got traumatic brain injury, uh-oh, when you mess with somebody’s mind!” he said. “When I came back I didn’t even know how to eat. They had to teach me how to eat.”
He went on:
“My daughter was only ten months so she was just learning how to walk. But she was scared of me when I first came home. I stayed in the bed for two weeks. I don’t even remember that. I stayed in the bed for two weeks and then my daughter wouldn’t even come to me ’cause she was scared of the wheelchair. And that really hurt me. She learned how to walk at fourteen months. And when I’d seen her take a few steps, I got out the wheelchair … and I took my first few steps. So me and my daughter learned how to walk together.”
Morgan wound up suing Walmart and settled for an undisclosed amount. It was revealed that the driver of the truck had been up for 24 hours at the time of the accident. Morgan later forgave him. Three years after the incident, he dedicated a Netflix special, Staying Alive, to the episode that nearly claimed his life.
You can listen to audio of Morgan’s story at Mediaite.
