‘He has come back from the dead’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.

Chevy Chase endured a “life-threatening” cardiac event that led to him being put into an induced coma in 2021, per details from a new documentary project 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 on two occasions, spent a total of five full weeks in the hospital.

“There was a problem, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart stopped. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Doctors then placed him into a state of unconsciousness for eight days, before advising his child, Caley: “He may not recover. We are unsure how cognizant he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“When he woke up, all he was able to do was use his vocal cords,” she continued. “He has practically come back from the dead.”

Chase himself has said that he has experienced recall difficulties since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a physical altercation with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

The comedian noted he was “upset” by his exclusion from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL recently, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.

“To be frank, it was disappointing,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett and Laraine were called up, I was puzzled as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I excluded?”

The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which precipitated a period of depression.