Jorma Taccone, the Lonely Island member and former Saturday Night Live writer, suffered a shattered pelvis and a detached sacrum in a 20-foot fall from a ladder at his farmhouse in Connecticut. Doctors say it could be three to six months before he’ll walk again.
Taccone described the harrowing details in a phone call to The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers Podcast (listen below) from his hospital bed.
After a rather somber introduction by Meyers, Taccone told the late night host and Lonely Island partners Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer that the incident occurred while he was painting a mural on a barn in time for his daughter’s fifth birthday.
“There’s a barn, and the back half of the barn has this big white wall,” Taccone said. “I was like, this is great, we can do a big mural…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.
“I’m almost done,”he continued. “I’ve done most of the [barn]. When this happens, 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.”
He felt the ladder give way. “In this moment,” he said, “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. I drop, I look over, I see the yard, I’m like, this is going to hurt a lot. I fall straight on my butt, taking all of the impact on my butt. 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!’”
After arriving at the hospital, Taccone was told by doctors that he’d shattered his pelvis and his sacrum has detached from his spine. He underwent surgery.
“A disc is bad now,” the 48-year-old actor-writer said, “so they have to chuck that out. It takes a while to schedule the surgery because they wanted to do the front part and back part as well.” Taccone said he’s gotten up with assistance and doctors say he’ll be walking within three to six months. “and you’ll be back to like all of the stuff that you normally do.’ So we shall see.”
Taccone says he’ll need acute rehab to fully recover, and that he knows it will be a painful process. He also noted that just before his fall on his daughter’s birthday, his wife, the filmmaker Marielle Heller, asked, “Why are we doing this now?”
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