Tracy Morgan shares the brutal details of a car crash with friends after being hit by a Walmart truck.
Morgan, 57, sat down with him Saturday Night Live‘s Marcello Hernández for Variety & CNN’s Cast Episode that aired Wednesday, June 10. In the interview, i The fall and rise of Reggie Dinkins star remembered getting into an accident with friends Ardie Fuqua and late James McNair, who died in the accident.
Back in 2014, Morgan was riding in a limousine with Fuqua and McNair – who also went by the stage name Jimmy Mack – down the New Jersey Turnpike after finishing a comedy show.
“We did a show together that night in Delaware, and we crashed. That truck was going 70 miles an hour with 85,000 frozen meals in the back,” Morgan recalled. “And my friend Jimmy Mack – God bless you – his neck was so broken that his face was on his back.”
The subject of the accident came up after Hernández, 28, said he was friends with Fuqua, 55, who had been a longtime friend of Morgan’s. Morgan revealed that the standup was one of the passengers in a car accident and was seriously injured.
“That’s my boy. He was in danger with me. He was in a coma for 20 days,” Morgan said of Fuqua. “I stayed in it for 10 days.”
Hernández replied, “I speak for all of us when I say we’re happy and blessed to be here, man.”
Morgan expressed his gratitude for Hernández’s sentiments and expressed that It’s SNL manager Lorne Michaels contacted Morgan’s ex-wife, Sabina, to check on his condition after the accident. (Morgan and Sabrina were high school sweethearts who were married from 1987 to 2009. Sabrina died in 2016 after a battle with cancer.)
“Lorne must have called my ex-wife about a thousand times to see if I was out of the coma,” he recalled.
Not only was Morgan placed in a medically induced coma during the incident, but he suffered multiple injuries including a broken femur, broken nose, traumatic brain injury and several broken ribs. After Morgan woke up, the comedian underwent months of treatment and rehabilitation to learn to walk and talk again.
The truck driver has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the driver had been on the road for 13 and a half hours. (The legal limit of a truck driver’s workday is 14 hours.)
Morgan eventually sued Walmart for negligence. The parties settled the case in 2015 for an undisclosed amount. I Saturday Night Live alum revealed on Wednesday that he received a huge payout.
“You know why we do comedy? A necessity. But once you do it, you surround yourself with people who need to do this as a necessity. You may not have bills to pay, because you did. But they have bills to pay, so they have to be funny,” he said. “I got hit by a Walmart truck, so with the money I got, I don’t have to do this, but I surround myself with people who have to do this and who love it.”
