The Harrowing Reason Jay Leno Has Been Wearing An Eye Patch

Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek’s network of contributors

Jay Leno isn’t letting a hill — and a rock — get in his way.

While chatting with TMZ on Monday, November 18, the 74-year-old comedian explained the story behind his latest accessory, an eye patch, after a tumble left him with a swollen eye and a bruised face.

“To get to it, I didn’t have a car, so you had to walk about a mile and a half around,” Leno recalled. “I said, ‘Well, the hill doesn’t look that steep. It’s about 60-70 feet. Let me see if I can go down the hill.'”

The shortcut ended with a rough fall. “I fell down. Boom, boom, boom. I rolled down the hill, hit my head on a rock, knocked me in the eye,” he told the outlet.

Despite the injuries, Leno didn’t skip his performance that same evening at the Yaamava’ Casino in Southern California. He waited until he returned to Los Angeles to get checked out at the hospital.

“When I came back to LA, I went to the hospital,” the former Tonight Show host said. “It was only a couple of hours of the show, so. It’s not that big of a deal, it’s fine!”

This isn’t Leno’s first brush with a serious accident. In November 2022, the retired NBC star suffered second- and third-degree burns to his face, chest, and hands in a garage fire.

“The fuel line was clogged so I was underneath it. It sounded clogged and I said, ‘Blow some air through the line,’ and so he [Dave Killackey] did,” he explained to Today‘s host Hoda Kotb a month after the accident. “And suddenly, boom, I got a face full of gas. And then the pilot light jumped and my face caught on fire.”

If that wasn’t enough, Leno had another mishap in January 2023. While riding his motorcycle, he broke his collarbone, ribs, and cracked his kneecaps after an unexpected collision with a wire strung across a parking lot.

“I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it,” Leno told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time. “So, you know, I didn’t see it until it was too late.”