During a recent appearance on the “Tamron Hall Show,” actress Jenifer Lewis fought back tears as she recalled not remembering how to walk after a near-deadly fall while vacationing in Africa.
“In Nairobi, when they asked me to walk, you know [with] the parallel bars? I couldn’t remember how to walk,” she told Hall in an emotional interview. “I couldn’t remember how to put one foot — I didn’t even… I couldn’t remember what to do! [The therapist], he said, ‘Mum, mum, you must walk here now. Come. Walk here.’ I was like, ‘How do you do that?’”
In March, Lewis discussed her near-death experience in an exclusive interview with Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America.” While visiting the Serengeti in November 2022, the actress fell 10 feet off of her hotel balcony in the middle of the night, into a dry ravine filled with boulders and stones.
“I didn’t know you could be in that much pain and be alive,” she said, per People. “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.”
With her right hip bearing most of the impact, Lewis recalled being immobilized after her fall. In shock and in pain, the actress remembered telling herself, “‘Move your body, baby… Come on Jenny, move your body,’” before mustering the strength to call out for help. Lewis was eventually airlifted to the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi.
“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, per People magazine.
Just as the star’s internal dialogue carried her through the initial shock of the accident, the little voice inside her head helped Lewis regain the ability to walk again after enduring 10 hours of surgery, multiple blood transfusions, and almost a week in an intensive care unit.
“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 Hall. “‘Now get up. Get up. You get up and you walk. Come on, baby.’ And I walked.”
“Whether it’s falling out of a relationship, falling out with your parents, falling down physically,” Lewis told “Good Morning America.” “Any fall, I wanna tell the world, ‘Oh yes, you can get up.”