Tracy Morgan Says He ‘Changed’ After Tragic Accident
After surviving a tragic car accident, Tracy Morgan says he’s a different person than he was when he made audiences laugh on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock.
“My need to help others and my need to love others, that’s what has changed,” Morgan, 48, revealed in an interview with People. “I know it has. Me as a person changed.”
Morgan was left in a coma for two weeks and fought even to walk again after a Walmart truck struck the limo bus in which he was a passenger on the New Jersey Turnpike, causing a multivehicle accident in June 2014. The star’s friend and mentor James “Jimmy Mac” McNair was killed.
In the three years since, Morgan has struggled physically, but he hasn’t become bitter — or at least too bitter to joke about what happened. It’s what he does; he’s a comedian. His new Netflix special, called Staying Alive for obvious reasons, comes out Tuesday.
“When anything ever badly happened to me, I made it funny and I turned it good,” Morgan said. “This was a bad thing that happened to me. I wanted to tell my story, but I also want to continue my standup career because all the great things that ever happened to me in my life came through standup.”
Support from his family, including his wife, Megan Wollover, and four children — three sons from a previous marriage and a 3-year-old daughter with Wollover — inspired him to think a comeback in his career and in life was possible.
“I have serious work ethic. I worked hard to come back,” Morgan said. “I’m not talking about just standup, I’m talking about getting up out of that wheelchair. To get up off that walker, I was working hard. I was working hard when I was in a coma. I have a young daughter, I have a wife, and I got sons, I got to be here. I’m a fighter, and I fought. That’s what I did with this standup; I fought to do it right.”
One thing Morgan is not fighting with anyone about is politics — or, more specifically, the changes to the U.S. health care system that lawmakers are proposing. He was asked about his opinions last week in an interview with Vulture and had a pretty clear-cut response.
“I’m down with the King. I don’t give a f*** about no bill; it ain’t gonna save your life,” he said. “When your room is ready, your room is ready. I don’t give a f*** about none of that s***. Never cared about no president. Nothing, none of that.”
So we know what won’t be talked about in his standup special.
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