Actor and newly-minted memoirist Jeremy Renner has had a long recovery journey since his grisly snow plow accident on January 1, 2023. The Hawkeye actor credits breathing — specifically, a Lamaze breathing class he took as a kid — with helping him survive in that life-or-death moment, and his care team for helping him heal in the many days since. That team of course includes doctors and nurses, but it also features several creatures that Renner introduced on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
During his April 29 chat, Renner introduced Jimmy Fallon and the audience to his dog, Hershey. And his adorably fluffy pet rabbit. Also, a pig. Plus a parrot named Ping-Pong. The Studio 6B stage got crowded quickly!
“Jeremy, I have to ask about your dog, Hershey. You mention in this book, he’s a huge part of your recovery process,” Fallon told Renner.
“I take him everywhere. He’s backstage, if you want to meet him,” Renner offered, and a handler brought out the actor’s tiny, sad-eyed dog. “He runs security for me, but he’s my emotional support animal.”
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Jeremy Renner brought his pig, bunny, dog, and parrot to The Tonight Show
Noting the pup’s fraught pout, Renner decided to bring out Hershey‘s emotional support animal: A grey and white bunny named Lady Fluffernutter. “So it’s a nice little happy family,” Renner said, though he added that Lady Fluffernutter was “getting very stressed out” and now needed the creature that soothes her: A precious pink spotted pig named Petunia.
Led out on a leash, Petunia climbed a wee ramp (eee!) to join the gang.
“Now look Jim, I know this seems like a lot, but we’ve been through a lot, okay?” Renner told Fallon. “We’re gonna get through this together!”
“No, I can only imagine,” Fallon agreed, adding that he wanted Renner (and the dog, and the bunny, and the pig) to be comfortable. And in order for Petunia to be comfortable, she needed her emotional support animal, Ping-Pong the blue-and-yellow macaw.
“Ping-Pong calms down Petunia, which calms down Lady Fluffernutter, which calms down Hershey,” Fallon recapped.
“Look, all I know is that I feel so calm, Jimmy, I forgot what we’re even talking about,” Renner joked. Meet the whole chaotic family in the video above.
Before the full menagerie took the stage, Renner told Fallon how writing his new book helped him process what happened to him — and why he hoped it would help the nephew who experienced the ordeal with him.
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Jeremy Renner recounts his accident in his memoir: “It didn’t just happen to me”
Renner told Fallon that he initially balked at reliving his snowplow accident by writing about it in My Next Breath. “I went through like a year, I was walking again, I was doing good,” he said. But ultimately, he continued, “to own it in a different way, word by word, was quite healing for me.”
He also realized he wanted to make sense of the experience for his nephew, who was with him when the Sno-Cat accident happened.
“It happened to my poor nephew who was holding my arm, and watching me bleed out and all that sort of stuff. And so it’s healing for him, and for my mother, who had to get that phone call and drive 13 hours through a snowstorm to get to me in the hospital,” Renner said. “So when I get out of my own way, you realize you open up the avenue for what the narrative really is. It didn’t just happen to me.”
As Renner writes in his book, he’s even gotten back on the very same Sno-Cat, despite the fact that it almost killed him. “I didn’t want this thing to haunt me or own me by any means,” he told Fallon, though he added that there were still “little pieces of my clothing in it still.”
Jeremy Renner Shares How Reliving His Near-Death Experience in My Next Breath Helped Him Heal
Renner also writes about how memories from a Lamaze class he attended with his mom at age 12 helped him survive and breathe through his injuries in the snow.
“There was so much pain, that you can’t quantify it in your brain. It’s just sort of not panicking, and breathing through it all,” Renner recounted. “And then I had to force breathe, because there was no reflexive breathing at this point — because my rib cage just collapsed on the lung,” he added, saying he had to stay calm seeing his “legs all twisted up like a pretzel.”
These days, Renner is staying grateful. “It’s impossible for me to have a bad day,” he said. Watch Jeremy Renner’s full Tonight Show interview above, and watch The Tonight Show on NBC and Peacock weeknights at 11:35/10:35c, streaming next-day on Peacock.
