There’s some gruesome stuff in Jeremy Renner’s first post-crash interview
Sitting down with Diane Sawyer, Renner revealed his potential last words, and discussed the full extent of his horrifying injuries
Aux News Jeremy Renner
Jeremy Renner gave his first serious TV interview since his near-fatal snowplow accident tonight, sitting down with ABC’s Diane Sawyer to reveal how the January 2 accident happened, the extent of his injuries, and what could have been his last words on earth: “Not today, motherfucker!”, as it happens.
Which was not, despite Renner’s apology to Sawyer for the profanity, the most graphic portion of the interview, by far: Renner, who’s candid about the horror of what happened, notes at one point that he could “see my eye with my other eye,” which is not, sans a mirror, how eyes are supposed to work. (One of the neighbors who helped Renner, in the aftermath of the 14,330-pound Sno-Cat running him over, said that, “his eye, it looked like it had been punched out.”)
Renner places the blame for the accident solely on himself, saying that it happened while he and his nephew Alex were trying to clear a car out of a snowbank. When the plow started to slip on the ice, Renner—concerned for his nephew—stuck a foot out of the Sno-Cat to get a better look, and then fell out of the vehicle. And then, when he tried to get back in and shut the plow down, he fell underneath it:
I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit, seeing if my nephew was there. You shouldn’t be outside the vehicle when you’re operating it, you know what I mean? It’s like driving a car with one foot out of the car. But it is what it was. And it’s my mistake, and I paid for it. That’s when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing. ”‘Not today, motherfucker!” is what I screamed. Sorry for the language.
And, hey, here comes another grisly description of the aftermath, again from one of the helpful neighbors: “When I looked at his head, it appeared to me to be cracked wide open and I could see white. I don’t know if that was his skull, maybe just my imagination, but that is what I thought I saw.” (There are the same neighbors, Rich Kovach and Barb Fletcher, who reported that the noises Renner was making at this time were “the sound of someone that was dying.”)
Renner, of course, survived—although he did use sign language to tell his family “Sorry” for the pain he’d put them through, and wrote a possible farewell note for them before going into surgery. Sawyer lays out the full list of injuries: “Eight ribs broken in 14 places. Right knee, right ankle broken, left leg tibia broken, left ankle broken, right clavicle broken, right shoulder broken. Face, eye socket, jaw, mandible broken. Lung collapsed. Pierced from the rib bone, your liver — which sounds terrifying.”
Renner did his damnedest to put a positive spin on it all, saying that he views what happened as a result of his desire to keep his nephew safe, saying, “I have no regrets. I’d do it again, I refuse to have that be a trauma and be a negative experience. That is a man that I’m proud of, because I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew. I shift the narrative of being victimized, or making a mistake, or anything else. I refuse to be fucking haunted by that memory that way.”
Renner is set to make a live appearance next week, for the premiere of his new Disney+ reality show Rennervations.
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“I have no regrets. I’d do it again, I refuse to have that be a trauma
and be a negative experience. That is a man that I’m proud of, because I
wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew. I shift the narrative of being
victimized, or making a mistake, or anything else. I refuse to be
fucking haunted by that memory that way.”
Damn! Good for him though, sounds better than dwelling on the past.
My father was a farmer, working with very large, very capricious machines nearly every day – alone; and no cell phones. You’d hear stories all of the time. I’m starting to see some of the sources of my old anxieties.
Same! Farming is no joke.Both Dad and Grandpa made it clear to all of us at a young age – everything around here could literally kill you (or severely maim you) if you act like a fool.Had a family farm friend down the road who was missing half of his calf muscle on his left leg. F’n disgusting to look at but a real impact was made.Respect the machines because they do not have any “respect” for you.
Grew up in the sticks. Two highschool friends dead by tractor before I was eighteen. It sticks with you.
I’m so sorry.
As a kid, I remember crawling over the power takeoff, a rotating shaft that connects the drive shaft of the tractor to whatever needs power on a wagon, rather than walking all the way around.It was incredibly dangerous. One slip, or one piece of loose clothing gets caught, and it could literally break every bone in your body.It’s crazy that all the adults seemed to take it for granted.
I mostly accidentally watched about the last half of it.I was surprised how moved I was.
“Renner is set to make a live appearance next week, for the premiere of his new Disney+ reality show Rennervations.”Not gonna lie, I really like that name for the show, good work team!
This is the craziest way to advertise the lead up to a terrible reality show that will get cancelled after one season.
So that happened 3 months ago, and now he looks… like nothing ever happened? He looks better than I do, or ever have, and I’ve never been sucked under a snow plow. That is some wild recovery. Good for him though, i’m happy he’s doing well!
I haven’t watched the full interview, but he implied that there may be a fair number of titanium screws/rods doing some of the work which may explain part of why he healed so fast as opposed to actually waiting for the bone itself to heal. Don’t know the extent of it (unless it is talked about more), but seems like a possibility.
Yeah, metal in your bones helps. I broke both bones in my leg just above the ankle (dislocated them out of the joint too, just for additional funsies) and had surgery to insert a bunch of pins and a plate in both. Had a cast on halfway up to my knee for eight weeks, but from about five or six weeks, I was able to partially reduce using crutches and just stump around on my good foot and my cast – by the end of the eight weeks, I was hardly using the crutches.Disney’s probably paid for adamantium coating Renner’s bones, and some pretty good physio too, which would also help.
Money buys good doctors and surgeons.
Now that’s recovered is it safe to make fun of his terrible album some more?