Jay Leno Gives Update on His 'New Face and Ear' After Serious Burn Injuries From a Garage Fire

Jay Leno is lucky to be alive after not just one, but two scary incidents in the past year. In November 2022, the 73-year-old comedian was badly burned on his face and hands when a clogged fuel line ignited while he was working on one of his classic cars. Just months later in January 2023, Leno suffered multiple broken bones after getting clotheslined on a vintage 1940 motorcycle.

In the most recent episode of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, airing on CNN and Max, the former Tonight Show host provided an update on his condition following both accidents. Specifically, Wallace asked Leno about his "new face and ear," as his injuries required medical reconstruction, including pig intestine as a biological skin substitute.

"Well, that means I got a new face and a new ear," he explained, via Mediaite. "I mean, ears when you, when you catch fire there’s no bone—ears are like paper. They go up. So they, they make you a new one. And they… It’s artificial skin. I think it is. Yeah."

When asked about the cosmetic work to his face, Leno resorted to his trademark sense of humor to make an off-color circumcision joke.

"Well, I guess you know, people think that the skin grafts are expensive. I have a friend who’s a mohel," he quipped, referencing the name of the person who performs the Jewish rite. "And he gave me a bag of them and you can’t even, you can’t even tell it must be 50-60…"

When Wallace noted that Leno's work "doesn’t look like foreskin," he added: "No, no, but when I get excited… well never mind."

Jokes aside, Leno also elaborated on just how close of a call his motorcycle accident had been. At the time, he had been test driving the bike and smelled leaking gas, so he turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot to investigate.

"The motorcycle didn’t do anything wrong. It was my fault," Leno recalled. "You know, I was riding this 1940 Indian. So I cut through a parking lot, but there was two posts with a chain across it. But no, you know, no flag. Plus I mean, the sun is like this, like the sun was on my eyes. Let me cut through this, boom, and it hit me in the neck and threw me down..."

"Yeah, I guess clothesline," he reiterated, after Wallace suggested the term. "Anyway, I mean, if I had been going 50 or 60, I would have been decapitated. But luckily it just…but it tore my face across here. So I went home and I called my face guy again, I go, you know, my new face. And he goes ‘what did you do?’ I told him, I went back to him and he fixed it again."

For his sake, let's hope Leno's "face guy" will be seeing less of him from here on out.