From a Law & Order: SVU star's collapsed lung to a British stuntman's paralysis
from the waist down, these are some of the small screen's ugliest on-set injuries.
The Good Wife is a courtroom drama that debuted in 2009. The show's creators,
Michelle and Robert King, were inspired after seeing many cases of wives standing
by their disgraced politician husbands after they confessed to an affair. Surprisingly,
a courtroom drama made the cut for a list like this. Nevertheless,
stunts aren't the only thing that could go wrong on a television set.
Kristin Chenoweth was on the set of The Good Wife for an outdoor sequence when a piece of
lighting production equipment fell on her head. During an appearance on Andy Cohen's
Watch What Happens Live, the actress said the terrifying event "practically killed" her.
Chenoweth also revealed in the interview that she fell unconscious instantly and woke up in
a hospital bed. The horrific accident left her with a 7-inch skull fracture and broken teeth,
among other injuries. The actor's doctor told her that if it hadn't been for her hair extensions,
she would have died that day since they held the hairline fracture on
her head together. She told Cohen that she has "long standing injuries" as a
result of the event and regrets not suing CBS over it. She explained:
"I didn't do it out of fear and anxiety."
Netflix had its work cut out for it when adapting Cowboy Bebop, one of the best anime shows of all
time. The beloved sci-fi series has a dedicated cult following, so getting the right cast was
always going to be vital. John Cho was ultimately cast as protagonist Spike Spiegel. However,
Cho hurt his knee during the filming of the highly anticipated show, tearing his ACL. The ACL tissue
is the muscle that links the thigh bone to the shin and is commonly torn in athletes.
Cho's recuperation from his ACL injury took a toll on him not only physically but also mentally. In a
promotional interview for the series, the actor told Vulture that he was concerned
about his extended time off, primarily for how it affected the show's production. He told Vulture:
"I felt very guilty that I had let the production down, and my cast,
and the crew in New Zealand that had had a job, and then they didn't the next day."
It's always a daunting task for television executives to develop a police procedural
that stands out from the crowd. The method 9-1-1 adopted was depending on the sheer
star power of actors like Angela Bassett and Peter Krause while bringing in talented guest
stars to support them. UFC and WWE star Ronda Rousey was one such guest. However,
Rousey's guest appearance did not go as planned, as she sustained a gruesome injury
while filming. Rousey described the event in a social media post, revealing that on the
very first take on a specific day, her finger was crushed by a boat door and nearly severed.
"Yeah, I looked down and my finger was barely hanging on."
While showing a picture of the injury, Rousey wrote in the caption of an Instagram post:
"I thought I just jammed my fingers so I finished the take before looking [...] [A]fter a break in
the action I told our director the situation and was rushed via ambulance to the hospital
where they promptly reattached my bone and tendon with a plate and screws."
Rousey went on to praise the medical team that worked on her finger,
revealing that 50% of normal motion had returned within three days of her surgery.
Prison Break debuted in 2005 and quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The drama morphed into a
sort of travel show with the main characters being pulled into an ever-growing government
conspiracy that forces them into different prisons all over the world. In Season 5,
a conspiracy leads the gang to Yemen. During the shooting of an action scene, an iron bar fell from
20 feet and struck Dominic Purcell on the head, leaving him seriously injured. He told Deadline:
"I dropped to my knees, and I was in shock. I'm just leaning over and the blood is just
pouring out like a shower, and my stunt guy came up beside me [...] And he said, 'Your
head's split right open, I can see your skull, your nose is on the other side of your face.'"
Because they were shooting in a remote part of Morocco, the kind of medical assistance
he needed wasn't immediately available. When the doctors at the local clinic he
was taken to started arguing amongst themselves, he walked out. As Purcell explained to Deadline,
his girlfriend then "took control" of the situation. He told the outlet:
"[She] poured alcohol on my head, and wrapped me up in gauze,
and then Fox got a helicopter and they flew me out from Ouarzazate to Casablanca."
He was taken to a renowned plastic surgeon in Casablanca,
who was able to fix him up. The actor was lucky to escape the ordeal with his life,
but he still has visible scars on his scalp to this day.
"Um, was uh, that's where the white of my skull was showing."
Mariska Hargitay has starred as Olivia Benson in over 500 episodes of Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit. Not every episode has been a joy to film for Hargitay,
but one led to a very serious injury. She recalled during an interview with Redbook:
"I was doing a stunt chasing a bad guy. I jumped and landed on pads,
but on the second take something happened — I just
landed wrong. I got up and felt that something inside was not quite right."
The actor shrugged it off as a muscle injury, and she seemed to get better. However,
three months later, she was walking on the beach when she suddenly experienced an intense,
stabbing pain in her chest and was unable to catch her breath. The actress revealed to Redbook:
"They took an X-ray and found that my right lung was 50% collapsed. I began to
panic. I was so scared. I had a procedure hoping to stave off more serious surgery,
but it didn't work, and I ended up in surgery about two weeks later."
Hargitay was told that the repaired lung was now healthier than her other lung,
but that there was still about a one in 1,000 chance that it would collapse again.
Despite those seemingly favorable odds, however, her lung collapsed
once again. However, she isn't bitter about it. The actress told Redbook:
"I get to be the one in 1,000 in so many positive ways, it balances out. I have so
many blessings, and I've learned from all of my experiences and my losses."
As Stephen Amell's tenure on Arrow ended, fans hoped that his next project would capitalize on
his abilities as a physical actor with considerable dramatic chops. When the
trailer for Heels was released, it promised to do just that in an inventive way. The show is
about a wrestler in a small town attempting to build a wrestling dynasty. The nature of
the show meant that Amell would have to do a lot of physical stuff, thus putting himself
in potential danger. It wasn't long before he picked up a nasty injury. Amell told ABC:
"I overshot it coast to coast on our first day of filming wrestling stuff and suffered
a compression fracture. I'm very fortunate and lucky that it was an injury that sounds scary,
but didn't require surgery. [It] just sort of healed on its own."
It was a terrifying moment not just for him,
but for everyone involved in the production. The actor told ABC:
"I certainly scared a lot of people."
Amell developed a huge respect for professional wrestlers while making
the show. He went on to say that he has no intention of swapping his comfortable
life as an actor for the grind of the pro-wrestling circuit anytime soon.
Jackass was once the most contentious show on television. The show's concept stems back to
the 1990s when Johnny Knoxville was trying to break into Hollywood. He couldn't find
acting work so he turned to journalism. While attempting a career in journalism,
Knoxville intended to put together an article about himself testing self-defense
equipment. When Jeff Tremaine, the editor of a skateboard magazine, heard about the idea,
he asked if he could film it. Knoxville was introduced to a bunch of like-minded
skaters and Jackass was born. The MTV show went on to be a massive success. But,
with a concept like that, serious injuries are inevitable. Knoxville told Entertainment Weekly:
"I have so many doctors in my phone. I have to
go for a tune up with one doctor or another at least once a month now."
The actor and stuntman sustained so many injuries during his Jackass
days that it's a wonder he's still walking. From herniated discs and
torn tendons to serious concussions, Knoxville has been through it all.
"My left eye popped out of its socket and it was,
the more that I blew the farther it was coming. So that freaked me out."
In his Entertainment Weekly interview, Knoxville admitted:
"Sometimes after a concussion you get a little down. But it kind of works itself
out. I feel like I'm very strong physically and mentally. I'm very lucky — it doesn't
always work out like this for a man who's had the amount of injuries that I've had."
Ozzy Osbourne first gained notoriety in the 1970s as the lead singer of the British rock band Black
Sabbath. Osbourne's fame went beyond the band as his antics made him notorious in the tabloids. In
the early 2000s, MTV capitalized on Osbourne's celebrity by greenlighting a reality show about
him and his family. The Osbournes didn't shy away from revealing big life events, such as
Sharon's cancer battle. One such significant event was the quad bike accident that injured Ozzy.
Osbourne was riding his quad bike on the grounds of the family's estate in England when he hit some
uneven ground and was thrown from the vehicle. Osbourne's bodyguard Sam Ruston told ABC:
"As the bike's tumbling and he's tumbling, he actually somehow gets entangled in the bike,
and he's rolling with the bike. I turned him over and I put my head on his chest,
and I hear no breath, no heartbeat, nothing."
Ruston performed mouth-to-mouth on Osbourne. When the rocker finally came around, he was
immediately transported to a hospital. Doctors found that one of Osbourne's lungs was partially
collapsed and several bones were damaged. Eight of Osbourne's ribs, some of his vertebrae,
and his left collarbone were all fractured. In 2019, he revealed that he was still
feeling the aftereffects of the accident. In an interview with SiriusXM, Osbourne revealed:
"For the last 10 years, I've been getting electric shocks down my arm."
At this point in history, Simon Cowell's standing in pop culture is more related to
his reputation as a caustic judge on numerous talent programs than to his actual day job
as a record label head. However, few fans are aware that Cowell himself was once a contestant
on an obscure talent show called Sale of the Century. His fondness for the format,
along with his notion that controversy garners attention, inspired Cowells to create the Got
Talent franchise. Since then, the Got Talent franchise has spawned over a hundred spin-offs.
America's Got Talent: Extreme was one such spin-off. The concept was the
same as in previous incarnations, with a combination of the judges,
host, and viewers voting for their favorite contestant. The only difference was that this
version contained daredevil stunts. However, a horrific accident on the set resulted in the
show being suspended indefinitely in 2021, with Cowell pulling the plug soon after.
Jonathan Goodwin, an experienced British stunt performer,
had been in several U.K. television shows before competing on America's Got Talent:
Extreme. He was crushed between two automobiles after his stunt on America's Got Talent:
Extreme went tragically wrong. As a result, Goodwin was paralyzed from the waist down.
"The prognosis is that, you know, unless there's
some sort of amazing thing that happens that this is me from, from here on out."
But Goodwin is doing his best to maintain a positive attitude. During
an appearance on Loose Women, he had this to say:
"I wouldn't wish it on anybody but I think that with all the physical
challenges I've had in my life I'm uniquely adapted to dealing with it."