Proving that he’s making an incredible recovery from the devastating accident he had on Jan. 1, Jeremy Renner walked out on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” stage on Monday’s episode, bearing a beaming smile and wielding his cane almost like a prop.
It was enough to prompt Jimmy Kimmel to jokingly ask, “Was this a publicity stunt?”
“Absolutely,” Renner said, to which Kimmel noted, “If there was any question about who the toughest Avenger is, now that’s settled.”
But of course things were much more serious than that, as Renner noted during the first half of the chat, at one point explaining that visits from some of his famous friends really made it sink in how seriously hurt he was. “They’re terrible actors, they couldn’t hide the fact that I looked awful,” he joked.
Renner, who was on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to promote his new Disney+ series “Rennervations,” was seriously injured on New Year’s Day when, while at his property near Reno, Nevada, his snow plow overturned and crushed him.
Miraculously, none of his vital organs were destroyed and despite at least 31 broken bones, his spine wasn’t injured. “I got lucky in a lot of ways, so I’m happy to be here,” Renner said.
“Is it funny to say you got ‘lucky’ after getting run over by a snow plow that broke so many bones?” Kimmel joked in response.
As the discussion went on, Renner revisited something he said during his recent interview with Diane Sawyer: that he almost felt like he needed to apologize to his family for what he’d put them through. Renner told Kimmel that, while lying on the ground waiting for medical help to arrive — almost 45 minutes, he said — not only was he freaked out about what he was going through, but also about what his nephew, who was with him, was seeing. “I had to consider what his perspective was. And then that kept happening with everyone’s perspective throughout this entire ordeal.”
Alongside the interview, Renner also shared a charming fake Cameo video Paul Rudd recorded for him during his hospitalization. You can watch that and the full interview with Kimmel in the video above.