‘Jackass’ Alum Bam Margera Reveals He Was ‘Pronounced Dead’ After Suffering 5 Seizures from COVID

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Former “Jackass” star Bam Margera is detailing his recovery from a life-threatening medical condition.

After contracting COVID-19, Margera revealed he suffered five severe seizures and aspiration pneumonia, leading to an almost fatal result.

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“I basically was pronounced dead on Elvis’ birthday,” Margera said during “Steve-O’s Wild Ride” podcast. “I did not know that I had gnarly COVID.”

He continued, “My body was shutting down, and I went into four seizures, each one lasting 10 to 20 minutes, and on the fourth one, I bit my tongue so hard it was nearly falling off. It got so swollen and puffy, it wouldn’t fit in my mouth, and I was drinking the infected blood, which gave me pneumonia as well, so when the shaman took me to the hospital, I went into my fifth seizure, and I couldn’t breathe without a tube down my throat.”

Margera, whose real name is Brandon Cole Margera, was unconscious for five days in a San Diego hospital despite feeling like he was admitted only “a couple of hours” ago. After eight days in total, Margera was released from the hospital. “When they took that tube out I felt like I sucked on Darth Vader’s dick,” he said.

Margera was booted from the “Jackass Forever” film after he allegedly broke a contract clause to stay sober during production. He tested positive for Adderall, which violated the “wellness agreement” Margera agreed to with the “Jackass Forever” producers while he was in rehab in 2019 prior to joining production. Margera said at the time, via Variety, that he had been taking Adderall by prescription for a decade.

The star filed a lawsuit against Paramount, “Jackass” co-creator Johnny Knoxville, and “Jackass Forever” director Spike Jonze disputing the termination. The suit was later settled.

“I don’t want to get into public back-and-forth with Bam,” Knoxville told GQ at the time. “I just want him to get better.”

Knoxville was later sued by a TaskRabbit handyman for emotional distress after an alleged on-camera prank involving threats of violence, illegal arrests for drug possession, and bizarre circumstances.

“At this point, Plaintiff was in a panic,” the lawsuit filed in December 2022 read. “In the span of just minutes, he had been threatened with being beaten up, told he botched the repair job, accused of murdering a pony, had his car taken without his permission, and was now being told that he would be arrested for possession of illicit narcotics.”

The handyman was offered a few hundred dollars after the sequence was revealed to be a prank with Knoxville, presumably for “Jackass.” Yet according to the lawsuit, handyman Khalil Khan suffered from “lack of sleep, anxiety, and emotional distress” after the incident, fearing that he would suffer from “embarrassment and ridicule” once the bit was made public.

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