Kevin Hart said in a recent interview that when was recovering from the car accident he had in September 2019 he wasn’t honest with doctors about his level of pain.
The “Night School” actor told podcast host Joe Rogan in a May 25 episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” that he was determined to walk again after having three spinal fractures from the crash, and he didn’t want doctors to thwart his progress.
Hart was in the passenger seat of his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda while his friend Jared Black was driving on the night of Sept. 1, 2019, near Malibu, California. The car went off the Mulholland Highway before it careened into a wooden fence.
Hart had to undergo surgery afterward and a grueling period of physical therapy. That’s when he decided to downplay his pain as a way to keep pace with the physical therapy goals he set for himself.
“I lied in the hospital because I didn’t want them to know that I was having pain, because I thought that they were going to stop me from letting me continue to try my walks,” he explained near the 57:55 mark.
Hart eventually began using a walker to move around and continued with the ruse that he was progressing more than he was by pretending to use his feet.
“It was like day seven in the hospital, and I had the walker, and it was slow walks, but I was dragging,” he recalled. “It was upper body, and I was masking it as if I was [using my] feet, because I didn’t want to stop trying.”
Hart broke his silence about the crash on video a month after it occurred and said it gave him a whole new perspective about appreciating life. It’s an attitude that he also discussed with Rogan.
“My biggest cry in life came from the first day that I came home from the hospital, because I never had to see that house again,” Hart told him. “There was an option of me never seeing that home again. There was an option of me never walking on that driveway again. There was an option of me never seeing my wife and my kids again.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Hart said that doctors told him if he had not been in top physical shape he could’ve been permanently paralyzed from the crash. Much of his spine is now made of metal due to all the damage that was caused.
