It has been five years since the horrific car accident that almost claimedTracy Morgan’s life.
The crashkilled his friendand collaborator, comedian James McNair, 62. Morgan was severely injured and put into a coma for two weeks .
Over the years, Morgan has gone into great detail about the repercussions he faced after that fateful day — and how it changed him forever.
“Some days were dark and some days were okay,” theSaturday Night Livestar said in his 2017 Netflix special,Staying Alive.
The comedian even admitted he had contemplated suicide during his long recovery.
“I suffered some terrible injuries – traumatic brain injury,” he added. “I broke every bone in my face, my ribs. I pulverized my femur. I’m from the ghetto and after I came out the coma I was blind for a week and where I come from you don’t want to be blind for a second. All kinds of s— started coming up missing in my hospital room.”
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After coming out of the coma he was placed in, he was affected physically and mentally.
“After the coma I was behaving erratically,” he said in the Netflix special. “I was acting really erratically and the doctors told my wife, ‘Mrs. Morgan, that’s the brain trauma.’ And my wife looked at the doctor and said, ‘Nah. Nah. [He’s] always been crazy. I was hoping the accident was going to fix his crazy brain.'”
The actor dealt with severe depression during recovery, but his family motivated him to fight through the dark days.
“When I was in my wheelchair, my daughter was 14 months old and I got to see her take her first steps,” he said of Maven, now 5. “That’s important to a man. That inspired me to get out of my wheelchair and I took my first steps. Now me and my daughter walk hand-in-hand for life because we learned how to walk at the same time. That’s magic.”
He also found inspiration from his fiancé at the time, Megan Wollover, whose pep-talk one day to her husband changed his entire mindset.
“When the accident happened, I got depressed watching my friends like Tina Fey, Kevin Hart, all those people, doing what I loved to do and I started eating a lot of comfort food and I put on a lot of lbs. and one day my wife just got fed up and was looking at me lying on the couch like a beached whale with disgust,” he explained in the special. “It was like she was counting the stretch marks and she said to me, ‘Why don’t you get off the couch and go to the comedy club and do some comedy?’ … And I jumped up and said, ‘I’m back!'”
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The pairmarried in 2015, with Morgan acknowledging his new wife as his strongest support system through it all.
The comedian also credited the cast ofSaturday Night Livefor helping him get back on his feet upon his return to work.
“By that cast. I will always be indebted to that cast for inspiring me to go back and be funny,” he toldHoward Stern in 2016. “They inspired me so much.”
In 2017, Morgan told PEOPLEwhy he did not shy away from joking about what happened when making his Netflix special.
“When anything ever bad happened to me I made it funny and I turned it good,” Morgan added. “This was a bad thing that happened to me. I wanted to tell my story, but I also want to continue my standup career because all the great things that ever happened to me in my life came through standup.”
Tracy Morgan.Tyler Essary/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
Morgan used his comedic talent to acknowledge the crash throughout the years, putting a humorous spin on it.
He added, “You can trust that.”
While Morgan has since made a full recovery and return to comedy and acting, hegot into another, minor car accidentjust last week in New York City.
TMZreported that the comedian had just bought a 2012 Bugatti Veyron at Manhattan Motorcars when a Honda SUV tried to make a last-minute turn and sideswiped Morgan’s new $2 million car.
Morgan was unharmed in the accident, and joked about it on Twitter afterwards.
“Thanks for any concern but I am totally fine. My NEW CAR? We shall see. Love you all,” hetweeted.
source: people.com
