TV Shows That Permanently Damaged Actors’ Bodies

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Many actors insist on doing their own stunts. Every precaution can be taken to ensure it goes swimmingly, but even one off-base factor can lead to disaster. Sometimes, a performer isn’t even doing anything all that dangerous. They could just be standing around talking, but fate has other ideas in mind for how a scene should go. 

Of course, an actor can bounce back from certain injuries without too much fanfare. Stephen Amell broke his back while filming for the wrestling show “Heels,” but amazingly, he claims that it healed on its own without surgery. Unfortunately, not everyone can be as lucky as Amell, and an on-set injury can have long-lasting consequences. Keep scrolling to learn about nine actors who had to carry their injuries with them long after their shows ended.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” seems about as safe of a show as you can get, as far as sustaining physical injuries. It’s about a housewife, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), who pursues stand-up comedy in the late 1950s, so most episodes are just people talking really fast. But Brosnahan’s issue was more with costuming than stunts, as her bones are permanently altered from having to wear a corset. 

The actress appeared on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” in 2020 to talk about her time on the show, and she revealed how several of her ribs are now fused together from delivering Amy Sherman-Palladino’s dialogue while wearing a corset. “We talk so fast on the show that to get all the words out you can’t really take very many breaths,” she elaborated. “And I think I wasn’t breathing a lot and I was a little bit constrained and apparently some of my ribs are sort of fused together a little bit, and I can’t take super deep breaths anymore.”

Brosnahan insists she’s “fine” despite how painful it sounds, but she’s not the only actress on TV who’s had to deal with painful corsets. Louisa Jacobson of “The Gilded Age,” HBO’s period piece set in the 1800s, has also spoken about how painful it can be to wear corsets, as she had trouble sleeping on her side due to the pain in her ribs.

Kristin Chenoweth is a Broadway darling, but when she’s not performing live, she has plenty of TV parts to keep her busy. One of these was Peggy Byrne in Season 4 of “The Good Wife,” but what was supposed to be a recurring part was cut short by a harrowing accident.

While filming outside, a piece of lighting equipment struck her head, resulting in a skull fracture, a broken nose, a cracked rib, and nerve damage. In her book, “I’m No Philosopher, But I Got Thoughts: Mini-Meditations for Saints, Sinners, and the Rest of Us,” Chenoweth credits her life to her hefty hair extensions: “My head cracked against the curb, leaving a seven-inch gash that would have been worse, the doctor told me, if not for the tightly woven hair extensions that held my scalp together. That’s right. I owed what was left of my concussed brain to a well-placed line of hair extensions.” (Chenoweth would later state her regret at not suing CBS after the accident.)

It’s easy to see the appeal of “Top Gear.” It’s a bunch of funny blokes driving cool cars every episode. But no matter how many vehicles someone operates, one wrong move can lead to disaster, which is precisely what happened to Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff while filming for the series in December 2022. 

Flintoff was behind the wheel of a three-wheeled Morgan Super 3, driving along a test track when the vehicle flipped and slid along the ground. He was stuck inside the car for about 30 to 40 minutes until air support could come and transport him to a hospital. He talked about the harrowing experience in a documentary titled “Flintoff” on Disney+, where he spoke about his biggest fear immediately in the aftermath: “I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”

Flintoff nearly died but escaped the situation with some broken ribs and significant facial injuries. In light of Flintoff’s injuries and recovery, the BBC effectively cancelled “Top Gear.” Additionally, Flintoff and the BBC eventually reached a settlement of $11.3 million. Flintoff has facial scars as a permanent reminder of the crash, but he’s also chronicled the way he’s struggled with his mental health. It took a while for him to get out of the house for a reason other than a medical appointment, but he’s out living his life again. He even got a new gig hosting the British game show “Bullseye.”

“S.W.A.T.,” an action-oriented police procedural, had its fair share of stunts. For one scene that was filmed in 2018, Kenny Johnson, who played Dominique Luca, had to hang from a helicopter’s landing gear as it took off. The exact details of what happened aren’t available, but Johnson suffered significant injuries, including nerve damage, following the stunt and required hip surgery in its aftermath. 

Johnson’s character didn’t appear for much of the first half of “S.W.A.T.” Season 4, and in 2020, he filed a lawsuit against Sony, as well as a couple of its subsidiaries, for allegedly failing to vet the stunt to ensure its safety. He sued for exposing him to an unreasonable risk, pointing out how he was in good physical and emotional health prior to the injury. Johnson eventually settled with Sony out of court, although any details regarding the outcome aren’t available.

Despite the lawsuit, Johnson remained on “S.W.A.T.” until Season 7, when his character suffered a gunshot wound and experienced nerve damage. Luca subsequently decided to retire rather than work behind a desk; Johnson has since appeared on shows like “Mayor of Kingstown” and “FBI: International.”

Daredevil Jonathan Goodwin got pretty far in the competition during “America’s Got Talent” Season 15. One act saw him dodging crossbow fire while blindfolded, so he’d naturally be a perfect pick for the short-lived spin-off series “America’s Got Talent: Extreme.” Sadly, Goodwin’s brief time on the show nearly ended his life.

During a rehearsal on Oct. 14, 2021, Goodwin practiced his stunt, which consisted of hanging from a straitjacket high in the air that he needed to escape from before two cars got released and collided with each other (and Goodwin, if he didn’t get out of the straitjacket in time). According to reports, something went wrong, and the two cars collided directly with him, resulting in a fiery explosion. In addition to third-degree burns, he also suffered internal organ injuries, resulting in the loss of his kidney. The incident also dislocated his spinal cord, causing permanent paralysis. 

Production became suspended but resumed shortly after. The footage of Goodwin’s accident has never aired, and in 2023, Goodwin began legal proceedings against the producers for “America’s Got Talent: Extreme.” He can no longer perform death-defying stunts, but he’s pivoted to becoming a hypnotherapist. He’s also an ambassador for the Spinal Injuries Association to help ensure anyone with a spinal cord injury can continue living a rich, fulfilling life.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan was one of the most terrifying villains on “The Walking Dead” — and yet, the person who suffered the most at Negan’s hand might’ve been Morgan himself.

When interviewed by Business Insider in 2022, Morgan revealed he broke both of his feet while filming “The Walking Dead” as a result of wearing poor footwear and jumping a lot. He was hesitant to seek medical treatment for a while due to fears surrounding COVID-19, and when he finally went, the damage had only escalated. “It started off as kind of nothing, a hairline fracture,” Morgan explained. “And then it got worse. The bones in my heel aren’t smooth anymore.” His foot surgery got delayed even further due to a hernia, but he eventually got it done. 

While his heels have sustained serious damage, that hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest. Following the end of “The Walking Dead,” Morgan got his own spin-off, “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” where he reprises his role of Negan opposite Lauren Cohan’s Maggie. His commitment to the role is admirable, considering this wasn’t even the first injury he sustained on the series: During a fight scene between Morgan and Andrew Lincoln (who played Rick Grimes), Lincoln broke Morgan’s nose. Fortunately, that all seems like water under the bridge, as Lincoln made it up to him by getting him a massage.

When “The Price Is Right” first premiered, the show enlisted models — known as Barker’s Beauties, in reference to host Bob Barker — to help hand out jet skis, furniture, and whatever else contestants might win on the show. It might seem like a safe gig, but Janice Pennington, who started with the show when it first aired in 1972, suffered a grievous injury during a 1988 taping.

Pennington accidentally got bumped by a camera that sent her falling into the row of contestants. She fell unconscious and had to be transported to the hospital; filming got delayed by 45 minutes, but was ultimately resumed. Pennington had to undergo two surgeries that left one of her shoulders about an inch shorter than the other, with scarring, so she didn’t wear swimsuits any longer on “The Price is Right.” 

Fortunately, she remained on the show until 2000, when she was unceremoniously fired after the show was acquired by Pearson Media. A confidentiality agreement prevented her from discussing the dismissal and what may have been behind it. Following Barker’s death in 2023, Pennington revealed to Entertainment Tonight that she hadn’t really kept in touch with him following her leaving. “After I left the show, he sort of stayed to himself,” she said. “He did a lot of work with animals. We didn’t see him [anymore]. He was quite private.”

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy helped make “Star Trek” the pop cultural behemoth it is today, but they didn’t come out of their “Star Trek: The Original Series” experience unscathed. The pair was filming a scene for the Season 1 episode “Arena,” which is probably best known by fans for featuring Captain Kirk (Shatner) fighting a Gorn on the famous Vazquez Rocks in California. For Shatner, it’s memorable for a far more depressing reason. While filming, he and Nimoy came too close to a prop that was set to explode. As a result, both men developed tinnitus, a medical condition in which the user experiences a chronic buzzing noise in the ear.

Shatner, in particular, has spoken at length about living with the condition. During one video he made with the American Tinnitus Association, Shatner explained how severe his condition became. “There were days when I didn’t know whether I would survive the agony,” he said. “I was so tormented by the screeching in my head.”

“Willow,” the 2022 Disney+ series that served as a legacy sequel to the 1988 fantasy film of the same name, got a bad deal from Disney. The show was cancelled after only one season, and to add insult to injury, it was completely removed from Disney+. But perhaps there’s another reason why Disney so quickly soured on the project, and it has to do with a significant injury Ralph Ineson suffered while shooting.

Ineson played Commander Ballantine, servant of Queen Sorsha (Joanne Whalley), and at one point, he battled an ogre known as the Scourge. During filming, he accidentally slipped and dislocated his shoulder. In 2023, Ineson filed a lawsuit against Disney, claiming to have sustained permanent shoulder damage, asserting that the area where the fight took place was not adequately cleaned to ensure his safety. The actor and Disney eventually settled out of court, though it’s unclear how much Ineson received in terms of compensation.

What’s interesting is that Ineson’s suing an employer didn’t prevent him from continuing to work with said employer. While the lawsuit played out, he starred in both “The First Omen” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” both made by production companies owned by Disney.