There’s no keeping Jay Leno down.
The legendary comedian sustained several dramatic injuries over the past few years, but he didn’t sound too worried about it while recounting the wounds on a recent episode of In Depth With Graham Bensinger.
“People get banged up in real jobs all the time,” Leno joked when Bensinger broached the subject.
Last year, Leno was set to perform in Pennsylvania when he took a painful spill, tumbling 60 feet down a hill outside of his hotel, and hitting his head on a rock in the process. When Bensinger mentioned that Leno still went onstage despite a broken wrist and significant bruising to his face and body, the comedian shrugged it off.
“I had a show to do,” he said simply. “I mean, you have an audience waiting there, what are you gonna say, ‘Excuse me, oh I banged my head.'”
Ryan Emberley/amfAR/Getty for amfAR
Jay Leno in 2024
“It wasn’t just banging your head,” Bensinger pointed out.
“Yeah, my eye sealed shut and I thought ‘Oh, I’m blind in one eye,'” Leno recalled, referencing the way his face swelled in the aftermath of his fall.
Though it seemed serious, the former late night host wasn’t too shaken: “Alright, well, I’m still gonna be a comedian. Just a comedian with one eye,” he said of his reaction. “And then three days later, ‘Oh, it opened!’ and I was like ‘Great, that’s fantastic.'”
He continued, “That was pretty funny that I fell down that stupid hill… I broke my wrist, I think I cracked something. Not too bad. But my face got really bashed in.
As for how he managed to perform before seeking medical attention, Leno insisted that he doesn’t feel pain when he’s onstage.
“I see it all the time: I see guys coughing and coughing and then they go onstage and for an hour they don’t cough,” he said. “Something happens. Something just changes. For me it’s the same thing too. If I’m in any sort of pain, just doing the show, it goes away.”
Two years before the hill incident, Leno suffered significant burns after a gas fire broke out in his garage. Afterward, he spent over a week in a burn unit and underwent skin-grafting procedures for his face, chest, and hands. But Leno brushed that incident aside as well, telling Bensinger that the most challenging part of his recovery process was “answering the phone.”
Pretending to answer calls, he recreated what made it so frustrating: “I’m fine! Yeah, no, I’m fine. It’s okay… Okay, thanks,” he said, hanging up the fake call to answer another. “Hello? Yeah, I’m fine!”
He joked that “every 10 minutes, a guy from high school that I haven’t seen in years” would call in to check on him.
That said, Leno said even the burns didn’t keep him away from the stage for too long.
Jim Morris/Grossman Burn Center
Jay Leno at Grossman Burn Center after suffering burns in 2022
“I missed two shows and I was down for eight, nine days,” he said. “So it wasn’t that bad.”
He had a similar attitude when recounting his 2023 motorcycle accident, in which he cracked both kneecaps and broke several bones, including his collarbone and two ribs.
“I could still stand so it [was] okay,” Leno said.
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And, since he already had so much injury experience, he knew exactly who to call.
“It tore my face up so then I had to call my face guy,” he said, joking, “He just gave me a new face and I go, ‘Yeah, I need another face.’ But it looks good. You can’t tell, he did a great job.
Last year, Leno’s many injuries led some to speculate that the former late night show host had been beaten up by the mob after accruing a massive gambling debt.
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“I love the idea that the Mob would drive to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, wait outside the Hampton Inn on a kind of sleety, rainy day to throw me down a hill,” Leno joked, shutting down the rumors during a visit to the Club Random podcast.
The comedian also pointed to his massive collection of classic cars, which are reportedly worth nearly half a billion dollars, arguing that if he did owe money, they would “just take one of my cars to pay the gambling debt.”
Watch Leno’s full appearance on In Depth above.
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