Jenifer Lewis is sharing that she recently came close to death after a scary fall during vacation left her in critical condition.
On March 12, during an exclusive sit-down with Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts, Lewis got candied about a near-death experience she had in Nov. 2022, People reported. Throughout their conversation, it was evident that Lewis was still shaken up about the incident, describing the previous year as one of “the hardest” due to the aftermath of it all.
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Roberts asked, “Did you think you were going to die?” Lewis responded, “I did.”
“I didn’t know you could be in that much pain and be alive,” she added. “I went from that high kick standing on my star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, five months later, I was on the ground of the Serengeti and that same leg couldn’t move.”
To jumpstart this new chapter, Lewis and her friends planned a trip to Africa. They arrived in Cape Town and traveled to Rwanda where she did hiked up a mountain where gorillas lived.
“We’re having a good time, we’re feeling a lot. We’re going where the real people are,” she told Roberts.
Afterward, they headed to the Serengeti, but tragedy struck once they settled in their hotel. At night, while Lewis was walking in her robe on her balcony, which did not have much lighting, she accidentally walked off the ledge and fell 10 feet before landing on the rocky ground.
“When the sun sets in the Serengeti, there are no street lights. It’s pitch black,” Lewis recalled. “I was escorted to the lodge, my room, but I wasn’t given a tour. I should have been given a tour.”
She continued, “I laid out my safari clothes and I saw the infinity pool out on my deck. So I went out, I was just taking in that I was back in the Serengeti once again. And I’m walking and all of a sudden, I had fallen 10 feet into a dry ravine full of boulders and stones and sharp rocks. There was a space that was not sectioned off and there was no sign that said, ‘Caution, 10-foot. drop.'”
Roberts questioned Lewis about the pain she felt after the steep fall.
“Of course I was in shock. My right hip took the impact. My shoulder went up against the stone,” Lewis said. “A lightning bolt went through my mind’s eye. In pitch black, I didn’t know I was falling, nothing would move. So I laid there and said, ‘Move your body, baby. Come on Jenny, move your body.'”
Although “it was hard even to take a big breath to scream,” she managed to somehow call out to her friend Laurie, who had to use a flashlight to locate Lewis.
“When Laurie ran to get help, I heard a lion roar,” she said. “My last thought, because I’m Jenifer Lewis, was ‘What a headline! The King Ate the Queen: Pieces of Jenifer Lewis’ Body Is Being Flown Back to the States.'”
Following her long recovery window over the last year, Lewis wants to be intentional going forward. She decided it was best to share her story now because she wanted the public to see her standing tall again.
“I didn’t want y’all to know I had fallen until I could show you how I got back up,” she said.
Watch Jenifer Lewis’ entire interview with Robin Roberts on Hulu.
