Blackish star Jenifer Lewis revealed that she suffered a near-fatal fall in Tanzania and was later airlifted to Aga Khan Hospital, Nairobi for surgery. Speaking to Good Morning America, Lewis shared that she was on vacation in Tanzania in December 2022 when she fell. The accident, which happened in the Serengeti, left Lewis unable to walk for months. The fall was 3 metres off her balcony and landed in a dry riverbed.
Since the end of Blackish in April 2022, Lewis had been looking forward to enjoying a well-deserved break. The 67-year-old has appeared on prestige films and TV like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air(1990-96), Girlfriends (2000-2006), Broadway in 1988, and Think Like a Man (2012). She planned an African safari to start her celebration with a friend.
When she fell off the balcony, Lewis recounted, she felt like a lightning bolt had struck through her imagination. It’d been so dark she didn’t realise she was falling. When she fell, her right shoulder and hip took the brunt of the fall. She couldn’t move her body. It hurt to breathe. Eventually, Lewis was able to get help by screaming. She joked on the show, after hearing a lion roar in the distance, the headlines would read “The King Ate the Queen: Pieces of Jenifer Lewis Flown Back to the US.”
.@ABC NEWS EXCLUSIVE: "In pitch black I didn't know I was falling."
Jenifer Lewis opens up to @RobinRoberts about a near-fatal fall she took while on her dream vacation. See more tonight at 8:30pm ET on @ABCNewsLive and @Hulu. pic.twitter.com/oSMAjsoXog
— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 12, 2024
The accident
Lewis had been absent from the public eye since Blackish ended. The 3m fall into the dark was unexpected and left her vulnerable after she shattered her hip bone and impacted her shoulder. She was staying at a resort, deep in the heart of Tanzania’s Serengeti. She went out on the balcony at night which extended into an infinity pool. The balcony was dark, with no flood lights or mood lights to show where the pool ended. Lewis also added there was no sign or railing.
In an interview with TMZ she talks more about her experience.
‘Black-ish’ star Jenifer Lewis fell 10 feet from a hotel balcony while vacationing in Africa. @JeniferLewis came on TMZ Live to open up about her near-death experience. pic.twitter.com/JZimkEUcD8
— TMZ Live (@TMZLive) March 13, 2024
Lewis slipped and fell, not knowing where the pool ended and the night began. She could not move after the right side of her body took the impact. She was in pain. For the next moments, all Lewis could do was worry about the wild animals and wake the friend she was travelling with, Laurie. Eventually, her friend woke up and later Maasai morans came to assist her. Before she passed out, the last thing she heard was a lion’s roar.
Lewis stated she was rescued by Maasai morans who usually graze their livestock in and near the game reserve. Because of how remote her hotel was, Doctors Without Borders had to be called to airlift her to Nairobi into Nairobi’s Aga Khan University Hospital. She underwent surgery for a broken acetabulum—the socket of the hip bone. The surgery took 10 hours, requiring three blood transfusions and a six-day stay in the ICU. It took Lewis months to recover fully and gain full mobility in her leg.
Lewis thanked the staff there who took care of her. They picked her up like she was a baby. She had to use diapers. She couldn’t walk for eight months. They braided her hair. “And gave me an extra piece of chicken,” she joked.
Lewis explained that she only came out about the fall after she had recovered from it. She added that her physical therapists would come in for two hours and she continued working for eight. She didn’t want to be a victim and never has been one. Lewis wanted to ensure she’d gotten her leg back. She told TMZ she’s currently working on her book, Get Up, which is about rising up after facing adversity. She has written two other books, The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir (2017) and Walking In My Joy: In These Streets (2022).
She also urged her audience to take care of their bodies. She believes that her body relied on cellular memory to recover. Lewis declines to think about what would have happened if her body wasn’t in shape.
A brief history of Jenifer Lewis’ career
Jenifer Jeanette Lewis was born in 1957. Her career started on Broadway where she was a backup singer for Bette Midler, a group known as the Harlettes. Her first film appearance was in 1988’s Beaches, another Midler production. Lewis made her TV debut in 1990’s Murphy Brown. At the peak of her career, Lewis predominantly played mothers. She’s colloquially known as the Mother of Black Hollywood. Her most notable roles under this banner are Mama Odie in The Princess and The Frog (2009), Loretta in Think Like a Man (2012), and Ruby Johnson in Blackish (2014-2022). Her last TV appearance is in Monsters at Work and she will be appearing in Rhona Who Lives by the River (2024), while in film, she’s in J. Lo’s musical extravaganza This is Me…Now: A Love Story (2024).
Other notable celebrity stories in Kenya
In most instances, when celebrities visit East Africa, they’re shooting films or music videos or going on safari. Most recently, Kelis was spotted walking through the Nairobi CBD. The video of her on Kenyatta Avenue trying to cross the infamous busy road went viral in January 2024. She was carrying several carrier bags and trying to encourage herself to cross the road. Kelis was on a cross-country tour having come from Zanzibar and was later seen in Ngare Ndare in Nanyuki.
A more historical event that has lived in collective memory was when Rowan Atkinson, Mr Bean, flew a plane on a flight from Mombasa to Wilson Airport, Nairobi in 2001. Reports stated that Atkinson took over the controls when the pilot fainted in high altitude. Initial attempts to rouse him failed and Atkinson kept the plane in the air until the pilot came to.
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