Four months after his horrific snowplow accident in Nevada, Jeremy Renner walked the red carpet on Tuesday night in Los Angeles for the premiere of his new Disney+ show Rennervations.
Renner, who was joined at the event by show co-host Rory Millikin, showrunner Patrick Costello, executive producer Romilda de Luca and build crew member Roxy Molohon, walked the carpet with a cane in hand and posed for photos alongside his family.
“From the personal challenges — physical, emotional, health, all of that — it’s come hand-in-hand with the show because the show is also very, very, very personal to me, it’s my life,” Renner told The Hollywood Reporter on the carpet. “There’s no character, there’s no script. This is just cameras investigating what I do for a living in my life.”
“The show became a wonderful milestone for me to aim towards for my physical health, for me to be here to share the story, to share this journey, and it’s been quite an honor to do so,” he continued. Renner also touched on his future in acting following the accident, confirming he plans to return to the screen.
“Never leaving anything that I love to do, I’ll always be busy doing things I love to do,” he said. “I’ll be a little bit more focused on the things that really have value and matter to me, and a lot of times people and fans really like that, and I’ve got to appreciate my amazing fans because they end up loving the things that I do, even with this as well.”
In the four-part Disney+ series, the actor and his team of expert builders reimagine decommissioned vehicles and rebuild them into innovative creations that serve communities around the world. Renner also brings some of his famous friends on board his Rennervations projects, including Anthony Mackie, Vanessa Hudgens, Anil Kapoor and Sebastián Yatra.
Inside the premiere, Renner received a standing ovation as he used a scooter and wheeled through the theater to the stage for a panel discussion that took place after a screening of the first episode of the docuseries. He was joined by his producing team on the panel, moderated by Jimmy Kimmel, after having been a guest on the host’s late night show on Monday.
Millikin revealed during the conversation that Renner didn’t originally like the name of the show, wanting to go with “Good Machines” as the title instead, as Kimmel joked that they vetoed Renner and dropped the logo while he was in the hospital and unable to weigh in.
On a more serious note, Kimmel noted the serendipity of debuting the charitable show while going through one of the hardest times of his own life, as Renner noted, “A big part of my recovery was the show, it set a big milestone for me to get better to make sure that all of our hard work was not for naught, for me running my damn self over. There’s no alternative. For me, it was easy because I had somewhere to go, somewhere to point, and I had a lot of love, man.”
On Jan. 1, the Avengers star was in a severe snowplow accident while trying to save his nephew, which resulted in the actor breaking more than 30 bones, his eye popping out of its socket and a pierced liver. The actor’s injuries were so extensive, he was convinced he was going to die. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, Renner admitted that he briefly considered end-of-life decisions. “Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine,” he said of a conversation with his family. “If my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now.” In just four short months, he’s quickly turned around that diagnosis.
Rennervations starts streaming on Disney+ on Wednesday.
