Jeremy Renner gladly acknowledged the elephant in the room when he stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday night (May 22).
While on the show to promote the third season of Paramount+ drama Mayor of Kingstown, Fallon started off the conversation about Renner's 2023 near-fatal snowplow accident. Although Renner recovered after having blunt chest trauma and breaking 38 bones, his spirits seemed lifted while chatting with Fallon.
"It is so good to see you. And I don't want to get emotional, but, gosh, I was so worried. I thought we lost you for a second," Fallon began.
"For a second, we did, yeah. But I got some duct tape and got put back together. It's all good," Renner joked.
Both discussed Renner originally being scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show last January, when the incident occurred, and the actor added that Fallon texted him, "'Dude, you're trending!'" while he was in the ICU.
"No, I'm dying," Renner said his response was, admitting that Fallon's message made him laugh.
Sharing that talking about the accident has become "cathartic" and "quite healing," Renner said that the accident "became much more other people's story as it was mine."
"It happened to my parents, happened to my poor daughter. It happened to my poor nephew. He was there," Renner continued. "So, the incident affects everybody, right?"
Renner was operating a Sno-Cat at the time of the accident, and he explained that while he'd used it before, riding the vehicle resulted in a devestating outcome.
"They use it in ski resorts... to plow runs and things like that. It's just one of those error moments and, you know, terrible conditions. It happened the way it happened. I was pulling a lot of things that got stuck in the snow," Renner detailed. "We had, like, 12 feet of snow in like three days or something. So we were trapped in the house. We had no electricity for like three or four days, and it was 25 of us."
During a "break in the weather," Renner wanted to "get people outside" but first needed to clear the road. "In doing so, pulling the truck out of the long driveway, got caught up...The machine got out of my hands. And it was running into my nephew and gonna crush him between the truck and the thing," Renner said. "So I jumped back on it—or tried to —and got caught up in the tracks...and it broke 38 bones. It was brutal, dude."
Among his injuries were 14 broken ribs and detatched eye, but Renner refused to panic, and instead focused on breathing. "No, you can't," when asked by Fallon if he panicked. "You die then."
With metal plates now in his left leg, half of his face and the right side of his back, Renner also had a recent interview with People, where he said that he's had to "accept" being in recovery for the long run.
“I had to accept it for the rest of my life. There'll be nothing normal or as it was prior to the accident,” he told the publication. "By the way, I'm okay with that. It's making my life better. I'm healthier because of it."
