Jenifer Lewis Emotionally Recalls Aftermath of Near-Fatal Fall in New Update

Jenifer Lewis

Jenifer Lewis shed new light on the near-fatal fall she suffered while on vacation two years ago.

Back in 2022, while vacationing in Tanzania, Lewis, now 67, fell about 10 feet from a balcony. This past March, while speaking with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts, Lewis explained that she had gone on to the balcony of her Serengeti hotel to get a closer look at the infinity pool when she suddenly fell into a dry ravine full of boulders, stones and sharp rocks. "I can't believe I didn't die," she said.

The Broadway star continued, sharing that she was "in shock," and after calling out for her friend who accompanied her on the trip, she heard a lion roar. “My last thought, because I am Jenifer Lewis, was, ‘What a headline,'” she joked with Roberts at the time. “‘The king ate the queen: Pieces of Jenifer Lewis’ body being flown back to the states.'”

While the nightmarish scenario, thankfully, didn't take a deadly turn, it wasn't exactly easy to recover from.

On Friday, April 5, Lewis sat down with talk show host Tamron Hall. During their conversation and while holding back tears, the Black-ish actress revealed that due to the severe trauma sustained during her accident, she "couldn't remember how to walk."

“In Nairobi, when they asked me to walk, you know the parallel bars? I couldn’t remember how to walk,” she told the talk show host. “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?'”

When Hall asked how she coped with relearning how to walk, the Hollywood legend responded candidly.

"I sat down in the wheelchair and I sobbed. And I hear myself say, 'You’ll get up. You’ll get up, and you’ll walk, or I’ll kill you myself. Now get up. Get up. You get up and you walk. Come on, baby.'" And with the power of her determination, she eventually took that first step and began walking, telling the audience with a big smile, "I walked."

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