Jeremy Renner Discusses Road to Recovery After Harrowing Snowplow Accident Transcript

We arrive at Jeremy Renner’s house in Los Angeles, and we expect a quiet sanctuary, a shattered man recovering from a brutal accident. But what’s that? Music is blasting, a hoard of people everywhere, and the patient is dancing. It’s Journey’s Any Way You Want It.

It feels good.

Where am I?

Easing up on it.

Look at you. Look at you. It is so great to see you in every way.

Good to see you.

I don’t want to touch anything that hurts.

Oh, everything’s good.

Is this new?

Yeah, I just got upright yesterday.

Really?

I just got on my feet yesterday, yeah.

Impossible that it’s only been 10 weeks since this.

Someone’s been run over by a Sno-Cat. Hurry.

Okay, tell me exactly what happened.

I don’t know. Someone’s in front of my house on the ground, they got run over by a Sno-Cat. He’s been crushed.

Okay.

Send paramedics, ambulance.

Everyone’s on the way right now, okay.

Listen to me. You might want to get a life flight out here immediately.

Okay. Are you with him right now?

Yes. He is in rough shape.

He’s moaning on the ground.

Is he awake?

Barely.

Are there any obvious injuries?

Oh, my God, yes.

I just have to ask the questions. They’re on their way.

This is the voice on that 911, Rich Kovach, who lives in a nearby house.

It was the blood, the amount of blood, and then he was just in such pain, and the sounds that were coming out of him. There was so much blood in the snow. And then when I looked at his head, it appeared to me to be cracked wide open, and I could see white. I don’t know if that was his skull, maybe it was just my imagination, but that’s what I thought I saw.

Kovach called for his partner, Barb Fletcher, to come help.

I didn’t know who it was. I just saw somebody laying there, and just a lot of blood coming from his head. I just grabbed one of the towels that was still folded, and just applied pressure. I could tell he was really struggling to breathe.

The two terrified strangers are not the only ones there, so was a young man named Alex Fries. That’s his uncle on the ground. The nephew lifts his uncle’s arm, it seems to help him breathe.

Just breathe, just breathe, that’s it. I stood over him in this crouched position, holding his arm for the entire time. From seconds after that guy came over, it was just that, and I’m just locked in on him.

The injured man is fighting with the kind of strength you see in superheroes, in the movies.

Let’s give them hell.

In fact, he is one. Jeremy Renner, Hawkeye, one of the Avengers.

(03:19)
Do you remember the pain?

All of it, yeah. I started to move my legs, and I said, “Oh, that one’s really messed up.” I said, “Oh yeah, that leg’s going to be a problem.” And then, what’s my body look like? Am I just going to be a spine and a brain, like a science experiment? Is that my existence now? What’s my existence going to be like?

And how did you first hear about it, Valerie?

The camera coverage. Can we just stop. I don’t know.

This is his mom.

He was intubated. He was out. His breathing was so horrible.

I heard that you had, in sign language, you said to your family, “I’m sorry.”

Yeah, I was signing that because I am, I’m sorry.

But the mom he says taught him everything about being tough and never giving up, stays by his side. And your mom read to you.

Oh, Jesus. So she’s reading Stephen King, some horror thing, but she just wants to read. She’s reading Dr. Seuss to me, like “How now brown cow?”

It happened to be what I was reading at the time, but I just wanted him to hear my voice.

Every single day for hours, he deploys his ferocious willpower to push through the pain, knowing how lucky he is to have the privilege of his healthcare and his family cheering him on.

Yeah. It’s nice to see my sister light up when I stand up in the little walker.

(05:20)
Yeah, it’s just the left leg has still got three breaks in it.

How do you feel?

My mom’s proud of me for going to the bathroom on my own. I move around a lot. What’s up, brother.

Good man. I like you’re standing.

Heck yeah, me too. It feels great.

So let’s just see sort of hip flexion here.

I’m going to shower after I work out today and stand up in the shower.

Yeah.

That’s going to be awesome. All these wonderful little victories.

He’s with his chiropractic sports physician, Dr. Christopher Vincent.

Ah, (beep), that hurts.

Yeah. This is a lot of scar tissue built up in here.

It’s all mental. It’s a mental game. Yeah, it hurts like hell.

That’s what makes it fun working with you because it’s like you’re so motivated to heal.

Yeah, yeah.

To get back to your life.

Well, what’s the alternative? You know what I mean?

Well, the alternative could be, “Hey, I give up. It’s too much work.” Where is most of the pain now?

It’s all in the shin area.

And remember that leg had the spiral break, fixed with a titanium rod and screws.

So that’s the one that is probably going to take exactly the longest.

Exactly. Yeah.

Renner says he still doesn’t have sensation in parts of his body, including the actor’s singular face.

This whole side of my body, I don’t really feel. Just sensitivity to touch, but it’ll grow. I can feel the change already in two months. The same with my face. I can’t feel hardly any of my teeth on the upper part because they went inside my face to put in two plates because of the orbital crack, because the eye was kind of really … I don’t want to go into it.

Crushed.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But his vision is now fine. Are you amazed by this recovery?

Oh, yeah. Can you believe?

His younger sister, Kym Renner, what do you ascribe it to?

It’s just being stubborn as (beep). Am I going to get bleeped?

It’s 100% what it is.

He’s so stubborn. The guy is so stubborn. He’s not going to let anything take him down.

I’m not like tenacious belief.

I mean, this is like Hawkeye belief.

Well, I’m not … I don’t know. It’s just belief, man.

He wants everyone to know that the real superpower is the ability to transform your suffering into your strength.

Yeah, Bubba. Yeah. Because I shift the narrative of being victimized or of making a mistake or anything else. I refuse to be (beep) haunted by that memory that way. This is what I talked to my family about, from all their perspectives, which are horrifying, that I put upon them. We just endured. That’s real love. It’s suffering, but that feeds the seeds of what love is.

Our thanks to Diane. You can see the entire conversation streaming on Hulu and Disney+.