Former Saturday Night Live writer Jorma Taccone fell from a 20-foot ladder and shattered his pelvis, he revealed in great detail on the The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers Podcast.
On the morning of his five-year-old daughter’s birthday, Taccone said he was working on adding a special touch to a new home project when he fell, leaving his sacrum detached from his spine.
“One of the projects I wanted to do this summer was I wanted to build… there’s a barn, and the back half of the barn has this big white wall. I was like, this is great, we can do a big mural,” he said explaining the preceding events at his Connecticut home from his hospital bed.
Along with Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer, Taccone is one-third of the comedy trio The Lonely Island, which is responsible for iconic SNL digital shorts including “Lazy Sunday,” “D— in a Box,” “I’m on a Boat” and many others. In addition to writing for SNL, he directed the films MacGruber and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.
“I was painting this barn, and as a final touch, I was like, I should hang these lights that will go around the eve of the barn to highlight the barn.” He “borrowed tons of ladders” to complete the project, he added, which turned out to be a terrible idea.
“I’m using this ladder that my neighbor let me borrow, and he was like, ‘Hey, this ladder is bad, like, you shouldn’t use this ladder. This doesn’t have a footing thing.’ I was like, ‘It’ll be good,’” he went on. “I’m probably 20 feet off the ground, on this very rickety ladder and I have it diagonal. The legs are not good, the base of the ladder is not good.” But he was “almost done,” he recalled. The ladder “started to go” and “give way,” Taccone said, and “my life flashes before my eyes.”
“I’m like, oh no, I’ve got to get off this ladder. I had enough time as I’m falling to be like, I’m going to die,” he said, describing the terrifying ordeal. When he hit the ground, “I fall straight on my butt, taking all of the impact on my butt,” he explained. “Then I do a lot of screaming and cursing. Keep in mind, it’s my daughter’s fifth birthday party, so it wasn’t the coolest way to start the day. I’m like, ‘Call an ambulance!’”
It was at the hospital where the SNL alum found out how bad the damage was.
He’d “shattered my pelvis on my lefthand side pretty badly” and his “sacrum has detached from my spine.” He will need “acute rehab” for his injuries, which will he thinks will take about three to six months to recover from before he can walk again.
“By the way, all of this sounds worse than it is,” he joked before growing serious. “It was probably the most rugged thing I will ever experience.”
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