Jeremy Renner Yelled ‘Not Today, Motherf–er!’ Before Being Crushed by Snow Plow

Jeremy Renner opened up about the terrifying snowplow accident that left him with several injuries in an emotional interview with Diane Sawyer on Thursday night. The program, Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, aired on ABC. During the interview, the actor admitted he was at fault in the snow plow accident and detailed the how the Jan. 1 incident unfolded.

Renner, who has been nominated for two Oscars and is best known for playing Hawkeye in Marvel’s Avengers movies, was at his home near Lake Tahoe, Nevada on New Year’s Day when his adult nephew’s truck got stuck in the snow. The actor attempted to use his Pistenbully snow groomer to dislodge the vehicle when the snow plow started sliding downhill.

“I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit, seeing if my nephew was there. You shouldn’t be outside the vehicle when you’re operating it, you know what I mean? It’s like driving a car with one foot out of the car,” said Renner. “But it is what it was. And it’s my mistake, and I paid for it.”

Renner jumped out but didn’t engage its emergency brake; when he saw the seven-ton vehicle hurtling toward his nephew, he tried to jump back in but was pulled under one of the tracks.

“That’s when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing,” said the actor. “‘Not today, motherfucker!’ is what I screamed. Sorry for the language.”

“The Pistenbully rolled over him and continued down the road,” a police report stated. “[Renner] laid on the ground and focused on his breathing while (his nephew and others) rendered aid to him until medical personnel arrived on the scene.” Medics airlifted him to a hospital where he received treatment for two weeks before being discharged.

In a preview from Sawyer’s interview, she listed Renner’s injuries: “Eight ribs broken in 14 places,” she says. “Right knee, right ankle broken, left leg tibia broken, left ankle broken, right clavicle broken, right shoulder broken. Face, eye socket, jaw, mandible broken. Lung collapsed. Pierced from the rib bone, your liver — which sounds terrifying.”

When she asked him if he remembered the pain, he said he remembers all of it. “I was awake through every moment,” he said. The clip also showed Renner doing physical therapy and moving around on a knee scooter.

In a moment of reflection, Renner told Sawyer, he’d do everything again if he had to. “Yeah, I’d do it again, because it was going right at my nephew,” he said.

The interview aired a week before Renner’s new Disney TV+ show, Rennervations, which he has described as “one of my biggest passions, and it’s a driving force in my recovery.”