The 53-year-old actor admitted he faced severe limitations when he returned to work as his body was still recovering from the accident, where he suffered blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries after attempting to help his nephew with a car issue.
‘They have to treat me like I’m a child actor. The mayor of Kingstown is now like a 14-year-old,’ he told the Los Angeles Times, before recalling an incident, where he fell asleep during a take on his first week back. ‘They go, “And action!” And I was out.’
He continued: ‘We discovered they worked me too hard, too many hours, too many days in a row. What I’m willing to do is everything, but what I’m able to do is a different thing.’
Jeremy Renner said he was treated ‘like a child’ on the set of Mayor of Kingstown after his horrific, near-fatal snowplow accident that took place on January 1, 2023
Jeremy also revealed that Mayor of Kingstown co-creator Hugh Dillion asked his mother for permission for him to return to set and Renner was unsure if he even wanted to.
He said: ‘To try to create some truth and then get the audience to believe it, while I’m just trying to learn to walk again, to put one foot in front of the other and not get up in agony. I’m doing all these things to find my footing on the planet again. The idea of going into a fictional world — I have to be honest with you, I had to really consider, Is this something I really want to do?’
However, Jeremy insisted the accident has left him with a more positive outlook on life.
He said: ‘It took the collective of all these people. That’s the power of love. It’s a slow burn. Man, I tell you…
‘I’m alive. I’m walking through life with a smile on my face. And there’s nothing that’s ever going to change that. Nothing. It’s impossible for me to have a bad day.’
In January, he confirmed he was back to working on his hit series as he expressed his jitters returning to set.
‘Day one on set,’ he wrote in a caption alongside a selfie, adding, ‘Nervous today.’
He also said that he was doing it all for his fans.
The 53-year-old actor admitted he faced severe limitations when he returned to work as his body was still recovering from the accident, where he suffered blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries after attempting to help his nephew with a car issue
‘Hope this works out that I can ACTUALLY pull this off for our production and more importantly the fans,’ he continued.
At the time, he also confessed he was ‘a little bit scared’ to be back at work.
‘I don’t know if I’m looking forward to it. Again, I try to just do everything kind of step by step here,’ after admitting he had ‘a lot of callousness squashed out of him’ from the accident,’ he told People. ‘That’s one foot in front of the other one. Then you’re walking. I think I’m excited when I’m there and I get in a rhythm there.’
He continued: ‘I’m excited about the character and, of course, all the people involved and all that in the storyline, but for me, I’m just tentative of confidence in work.’
He admitted the show is ‘arduous’ since he films between 14 and 18-hour days, ‘in the freezing cold outside in Pittsburgh.’
On top of the long hours, he added he’s, ‘scared of slipping and falling,’ since he doesn’t possess the, ‘lower body strength’ he had before the accident.
‘We discovered they worked me too hard, too many hours, too many days in a row. What I’m willing to do is everything, but what I’m able to do is a different thing,’ he told the Los Angeles Times
In February, he told The Hollywood Reporter that ‘doing television is quite arduous’ and involves ‘long hours and a lot of heavy lifting.’
‘I’m just focusing on this right now and will see how I come out at the end of it. Because my number one priority still is my recovery and strengthening and just getting better, internally and externally, every day,’ he noted. ‘I’m allowing my body always to dictate what I can and cannot do in my life.’
Mayor of Kingstown’s season three returns on June 2.
On New Year’s Day in 2023, Renner was plowing snow around his neighborhood in Mount Rose, Nevada when he stopped to help a family member whose car was stuck.
In January, he confirmed he was back to working on his hit series as he expressed his jitters returning to set
On New Year’s Day in 2023, Renner was plowing snow around his neighborhood in Mount Rose, Nevada when he stopped to help a family member whose car was stuck
His 14,000-lb industrial vehicle ran him over, breaking more than 30 of his bones and leaving him with a collapsed lung.
‘I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience,’ he said in an interview with ABC News last April. ‘But I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.’
He said that while in critical condition he wrote a goodbye note to his family on his phone, and wondered to himself: ‘What’s my body look like? Am I just going to be like a spine and a brain like a science experiment?’
Doctors rebuilt his rib cage with metal, and used metallic plates to put his eye socket back together. He now has a titanium rod and screws in his leg.
