Jennifer Lewis made an emotional visit to The Tamron Hall Show, where she recounted the harrowing near-death experience she had in late 2022, when she fell 10-feet off a balcony while vacationing in Africa.
The Black-ish star, 67, appeared on an episode of the syndicated daytime show that aired Friday, April 5, and held back tears as she revealed she forgot how to walk after the accident.
"In Nairobi when they asked me to walk, you know the parallel bars? I couldn't remember how to walk," she said. "I couldn't remember how to put one foot. I didn't even... I couldn't remember what to do! He said, 'Mum, mum, you must walk here now. Come. Walk here.' I was like, 'How do you do that?' "
Still they have labelled the angels, who are servants of the Most Compassionate, as female. Did they witness their creation? Their statement will be recorded, and they will be questioned!
(The Quran - Chapter Az-Zukhruf : 19)
Overcoming that wasn't easy, but Lewis finally took those steps forward through her sheer determination.
I sat down in the wheelchair and I sobbed and I heard myself say, 'You'll get up. You'll get up and you'll walk, or I'll kill you myself,' " she told Tamron Hall, 53. "'Now get up. Get up. You get up and you walk. Come on baby.' And I walked."
Lewis first spoke out about the fall in an interview with ABC News' Robin Roberts previewed on Good Morning America on March 12.
The accident happened in November 2022. At the time, Lewis and her friends were in the middle of an African getaway, and had just checked into their hotel in the Serengeti. But while walking by her room's private pool in the pitch black of night, Lewis fell 10 feet into a dry ravine full of boulders and sharp rocks, with her right hip taking the impact.
Laying there alone in the dark, her body in shock and pain, Lewis thought she was going to die. "I didn't know you could be in that much pain and be alive," she said. "I went from that high kick standing on my star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, five months later, I was on the ground of the Serengeti and that same leg couldn’t move."
Then she heard the roars of lions nearby. "My last thought, because I'm Jenifer Lewis, was 'What a headline! The King Ate the Queen: Pieces of Jenifer Lewis' Body Is Being Flown Back to the States,' " she joked.
A Doctors Without Borders team ultimately airlifted Lewis to Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, she told in an interview published March 27. "As I laid in that helicopter, I was in and out of consciousness and all I could hear was my soul screaming, ‘Whatever this is Jenny, you'll come back. If you're breathing, you'll come back,’ ” she said.
Dr. Parmenas Oroko treated Lewis, who had fractured her acetabulum, the socket of the hip bone that holds the femur in place. The orthopedic surgeon performed a nine hour surgery on the actress, replacing her acetabulum with titanium.
"When I got to the emergency room, he was there in his mask and I saw his eyes," she recalled. "His eyes were so warm. They'd given me so much morphine for the pain but I could see the warmth in his eyes through those drugs. I knew I was in good hands. And he said to me, ‘Your body is broken and you need to be fixed.’ I looked into his eyes and said, ‘Please fix me.’ And he saved my life.”
Lewis remained in the ICU for six days, where she also had three blood transfusions. She remained hospitalized for 10 days in Africa, and after finally flying back to the United States, spent four days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for an evaluation before being transferred to the California Rehabilitation Institute for two weeks.
The next 10 months were dedicated to at-home physical therapy.
“All of my physical therapists, they couldn't even believe my attitude,” she told. “They would say to me, ‘Give me three more, Jennifer.’ I said, ‘No, let me do 10 more. 20 more.’ It is what's inside of you that will heal you. If you want to sit down and feel sorry for yourself, you're not going to heal. It's the getting up.”
It's that positive attitude that carried Lewis through.
On The Tamron Hall Show, Lewis said she made a video recording her last will and testament. Looking back on it, she's proud of what she filmed.
"I'm going to tell you what I liked. You know, we can run around and say, 'I love myself' all day. But when I saw that video and I said to the world, 'Laugh when there's nothing funny' — I was born to make people laugh," Lewis said. "Here's the thing. I like that girl that said [that]. That was the gift she wanted to continue even after death. 'Keep laughing.' I liked her. I was happy that I was that happy knowing that that was the end for me. That that is what I would have said."
The Tamron Hall Show airs weekdays in syndication (check local listings)
