‘He has come back from the dead’: Chevy Chase spent eight days in a coma during Covid pandemic.

Chevy Chase endured a “life-threatening” heart failure that caused him being put into an medically induced coma during the pandemic, as revealed in a new documentary project about the comedy star.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

“Something was wrong, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he got cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Doctors then placed him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before cautioning his child, his daughter: “His return is uncertain. We don’t know how cognizant he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has practically returned from the dead.”

He himself has said that he has suffered memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the project he does not recollect some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

The comedian noted he was “hurt” by his exclusion from the 50th anniversary special of SNL this year, at which he was in the crowd but not participating.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I thought that I could have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman went on the stage, I was wondering as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which triggered a period of depression.