Jay Leno says he sustained multiple injuries in a motorcycle accident last week, almost exactly two months after his face was burned while working on one of his beloved vintage cars.
Leno, who is slated to return to the Las Vegas Strip in March, told the Las Vegas Review Journal he didn’t make the second accident public because of the massive amount of coverage of the November incident.
Leno’s representatives did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for confirmation on the accident.
The news of his accident came out at the same time a report from The Hollywood Reporter said that his CNBC program, “Jay Leno’s Garage,” which has run since 2015, was being dropped from the network’s primetime lineup.
The 72-year-old said he was working on a 1940 Indian motorcycle on Jan. 17 and during a test drive, he smelled leaking gas – an especially concerning scent after the November fire.
“So I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it,” Leno said. “So, you know, I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just clotheslined me and, boom, knocked me off the bike.”
“The bike kept going, and you know how that works out,” he added.
Leno said he’s got a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and two cracked kneecaps from the crash. “But I’m OK!” Leno said. “I’m OK, I’m working. I’m working this weekend.”
He’s slated to appear at a sold-out show at The Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California, on Sunday, ironically the same club where he made his return to the stage in November after the fire.
Leno was avoiding publicity for the second accident. “You know, after getting burned up, you get that one for free,” Leno told the Review Journal. “After that, you’re Harrison Ford, crashing airplanes. You just want to keep your head down.”
In November, the former “Tonight Show” host was pulled out from under a vintage vehicle he was working on after it burst into flames. It left Leno with second and third-degree burns on the left side of his face. He was treated at the Grossman Burn Center in Los Angeles and had two surgeries.
He returned to the stage two weeks later, quipping outside that, “We’ve got two shows tonight: regular and extra crispy.”
His set these days does not contain jokes on politics, he told the newspaper, recalling that his longtime friend Rodney Dangerfield never did political jokes. “Nowadays, people are mad if you don’t say how you feel,” he said. “I’ve just taken politics out of the act, altogether. I just don’t discuss anymore. It’s like before the punch line, they’re deciding, ‘Is he pro-my guy, or against my guy?’”
