Jackass Star Says He Was Officially Pronounced Dead

Bam Margera recently revealed he was officially pronounced dead on December 8th after a series of horrible seizures.

By Chris Snellgrove | Updated

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It’s been a scary couple of months for Jackass star Bam Margera. In early December, there were reports of the reality star having a major health scare that ended up with him being put on a ventilator in the ICU, but it turns out that things were even worse for Margera than everyone first thought. In his recent appearance on the Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast, Margera said that “I basically was pronounced dead on Elvis’ birthday, December 8th,” though he has no memory of the event.

Over the course of the interview, Jackass veteran star Bam Margera mentioned everything he went through, and it sounds more brutal than anything we have seen happen to him onscreen. For example, he mentioned that he was unknowingly dealing with “gnarly COVID” when his body went into four seizures that ranged from 10 to 20 minutes each. The seizures seemed to increase in intensity, and Margera said that he bit his tongue so hard on the fourth seizure that his tongue nearly came off. 

Jackass could never have prepared Bam Margera for what came next. At this point, he says that he was “drinking the infected blood,” and this resulted in him developing pneumonia on top of everything else. He was taken to the hospital, but he then experienced a fifth seizure upon his arrival.

After surviving so many dangerous stunts on Jackass, chances are that Bam Margera thought this would be something he could easily bounce back from. Instead, when he arrived at the hospital, he couldn’t breathe “without a tube down my throat.” Even then, he expected to recover much sooner than he actually did.

When he woke up, the star thought he had only been out of it for a couple of hours. Jackass trained Bam Margera to bounce back from things very quickly, so he was shocked to discover that he had been in the hospital for the past five days. To make things even scarier, the doctors tried to take him off the ventilator but soon discovered that he couldn’t breathe without it.

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Bam Margera on Steve-O’s Wild Ride

After waking up, he still had to spend another eight days in the hospital. Employing some of his trademark Jackass humor, Bam Margera joked about the feeling of the tube in his mouth, saying that it felt like he was sexually pleasuring Darth Vader. Eventually, though, he moved on to discuss a somber topic.

Previously, Jackass fans were spreading rumors that Bam Margera had been placed in a conservatorship because of his struggles with addiction and mental health. However, Margera confirmed that what happened instead was that he is on healthcare guardianship from his family and that this arrangement is only temporary. This will hopefully reassure fans that worried about Margera not having control over his own money.

During the podcast, Jackass fans got to hear more about a future collaboration between Bam Margera and Steve-O, with the two of them teasing the audience about a standup comedy tour they would like to perform together. However, the two made no mention of the future of the Jackass franchise, which is particularly disappointing for fans hoping for Margera to make a return after his absence from Jackass Forever.