‘He was brought back from the edge’: Chevy Chase endured eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.

The famed comedian endured a “potentially fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an medically induced coma in 2021, as revealed in a new film about the American actor and comedian.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars twice, spent a total of five full weeks in the hospital.

“There was a problem, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart stops. During those years he was drinking, he got cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Doctors then placed him into a coma for eight days, before advising his daughter, Caley: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how aware he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“When he woke up, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she added. “He has basically returned from the dead.”

He himself has revealed that he has experienced recall difficulties since his hospital stay, and in the film he does not recollect some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a physical altercation with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live dressing room.

He expressed he was “hurt” by his absence from the 50th anniversary special of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in the audience but not participating.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett and Laraine Newman went on the stage, I was puzzled as to why I wasn't. I wasn't invited. Why was I excluded?”

Chase, 82, almost died in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of depression.