‘He was brought back from the edge’: The comedy legend endured eight days in a medically induced coma during Covid pandemic.

Chevy Chase experienced a “near fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an induced coma during the pandemic, per details from a new documentary project about the American actor and comedian.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five weeks in the medical facility.

“He wasn't right, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart stopped. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a coma for over a week, before advising his child, his daughter: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how present 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 stated further. “He has essentially returned from the dead.”

The actor personally has stated that he has experienced memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the project he cannot remember some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fistfight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

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

“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I assumed that I could have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman were called up, I was curious as to why I didn’t. I wasn't invited. Why was I left aside?”

Chase, 82, almost died in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of depression.