Jenifer Lewis on Surviving a Near-Fatal Fall: ‘You’ve Got to Get Back Up’ (EXCLUSIVE)
The ‘Black-ish’ star on survival, strength & her greatest honor—read her Woman’s World interview!
Jenifer Lewis will be the first to admit she lives a blessed life, but the acclaimed actress has also known her share of challenges, including a battle with bipolar disorder and a near-fatal fall in 2022. But at 68, the high-spirited, high-kicking dynamo refuses to be kept down—no matter the circumstance. Armed with faith and exuding a positive energy that is absolutely infectious, Jenifer is the epitome of a survivor.
Jenifer Lewis surviving and thriving
While on vacation in Africa in 2022, Jenifer stepped off her dark hotel balcony—that didn’t have a railing—and fell 10 feet into a rocky ravine. As she called out desperately for help, Jenifer heard a lion roaring nearby before she passed out. At the time, she didn’t think she would live through the ordeal.
Thankfully, Jenifer was rescued after a friend went for help. She underwent a nine-hour hip surgery and a long, difficult recovery. “I couldn’t move. I fought for my life, then I couldn’t walk for eight months,” Jenifer, tells Woman’s World as our cover girl (get your copy here!).
“When you are forced to be an observer of life—a human being opposed to a human doing—you learn a thing or two. My mantra became, ‘There is no pain. Keep going baby, just keep going.’ The first step is always the hardest, but we have to take it. Don’t sit on the sidelines of your life, don’t wait.”
Jenifer Lewis on never giving up
The Missouri native has always been a fighter. Jenifer began her career in Broadway musicals and also worked as Bette Midler’s backup vocalist before launching an impressive film career that has included roles in Beaches, Sister Act, What’s Love Got to Do with It, Poetic Justice, The Preacher’s Wife, Cast Away and many more.
Affectionately known as the “Mother of Black Hollywood,” Jenifer has also been a beloved presence on the small screen, starring in such television shows as Strong Medicine, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Black-ish. As a voice actor, she’s been Mama Odie in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog and as Flo in Pixar’s Cars series.
“I’m really one of the lucky ones that got to know what I wanted so very early on,” says Jenifer, who sang her first solo in church at five years old. “When you know what you want and you get that head start, what a blessing and a gift. I’ve given up many times, but I didn’t quit. I never quit. You can’t quit what you are.”
Jenifer knows how to pick herself back up
Jenifer has overcome many obstacles on her way to building a successful career, but she says the most difficult was being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “My fall wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve faced in my life—I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 33. And it was the person that I’d become before my fall who got me up off the ground,” Jenifer shares.
“When I was being rushed to the hospital, my soul screamed, ‘Whatever this is baby, you will come back! You don’t know how to be a victim.’ We all fall in life, and you must develop tools to pick you back up.
“The me I had become before the fall was the girl who had come out of poverty and said, ‘No, there’s something bigger.’ It was the little girl that said, ‘I have a gift and it will be seen and I will honor the gift. I will sing the songs. I will write the lyrics. I will write the books. I will educate myself. I will climb the ladder. I will not take the elevator. I will go step by step. I will ask for help and I will ring the bells and I will stand on the top of mountains.’”
Jenifer Lewis talks the lessons she’s learned
Speaking from her California home during a wide-ranging conversation that lasts well over an hour, Jenifer is thoughtful, vulnerable and displays an eagerness to share her hard-earned wisdom with others in hopes it will help them lead a better life. “We have to start to be kinder in this world now,” she asserts. “We need to be kinder to each other.”
She also encourages women to be kinder to themselves. “When you wake up and you feel like you can’t move, leave a pen and paper near your bed and write your way up,” she says. “Start writing everything that’s beautiful and wonderful, even if it’s about the trees in your yard or the flowers down the street or the sound of children playing or the moon rising over a mountain. You can find something that made you happy one day in your life.”
“Then get up, wash your face and then you can sit down and think about the things you have to address because now you’ve armed yourself with the things that are good,” Jenifer smiles. “You’ve balanced a little bit where you won’t fall apart. You now have the strength and the courage to balance whatever is going wrong in your life because you took the time to be thankful for the things you do have so now you have the balance.”
Jenifer’s greatest honor
Jenifer is well known as a force for good, and in fact, one of the greatest honors of her life came in January when she was honored during the MLK Scholarship & Awards Gala held in Dallas during the 43rd annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. “I cried for a week. I was just filled with joy. There can’t be a greater honor,” she says.
Though she’s quick to embrace life’s blessings, Jenifer acknowledges we all have struggles. “We all won’t fall into wild animals in the Serengeti, but you’ll fall in some kind of way whether it’s a physical fall or a fall out of a relationship,” she says. “We fall. We are human and we fall. You get a call that the ambulance just picked up your sister. You get a call when your mother is in the hospital. You get a call somebody broke up, but you have to develop tools that will pull you up and allow you to balance the horrors of life.”
One of the tools that helped her recover from the accident is gratitude, and she encourages others to embrace it. “I took an imaginary water hose and I filled every room in my house with liquid gratitude and I swim in it. Every time I enter a room I dive into that gratitude,” she says.
“I plan to go back to Africa in 2025. When you fall you’ve got to get back up. I’m not scared just because a lion roared and I could have been killed. It doesn’t mean I’m not going on a safari again. I’m not going to stop living and curl up and go, ‘Oh that was so scary!’ Yeah, it was scary, but you’ve got to get back up anyway.”
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