Chris Kattan Says He Broke His Neck During an 'SNL' Sketch

Chris Kattan claims he broke his neck while performing in a sketch on Saturday Night Live back in 2001.

The actor, now 48, says that the injury almost paralyzed him and he’s opening up about the years of addiction struggles that came after in his new memoir “Baby Don’t Hurt Me: Stories and Scars from Saturday Night Live.”

Chris provided an excerpt to Variety and opened up to them about the incident, which he says happened during a Golden Girls sketch in the May 12, 2001 episode. He fell back in his chair as he said was planned and hit his head. Despite his requests for a different chair to make the moment safer, he claims his requests weren’t fulfilled.

After experiencing pain in the weeks and months that followed, Chris assumed it would eventually go away. He finally went to get it checked out a year later after guidance from a chiropractor, though he says he never really asked for help from NBC. When he tried looking into workers’ compensation years later, he was told it was too late.

“NBC had stopped paying my medical costs after the second surgery,” Chris writes in the book. “The SNL family I was part of had stopped taking care of me, and soon I wasn’t able to pay for everything myself. But I never really fought for myself or demanded anything. I never thought about the potential legal ramifications of what had happened to me on the set and what was happening now. I had been brought up to be responsible for myself. I wasn’t about to sue anybody. I never wanted to be that person: spending my life debilitated and fighting a network. I wanted to hide everything, pretending I was okay and in good enough shape to be go out in public and be social.”

He added, “Even today, I still can’t open my hand wide enough to use my fingers normally on the keyboard. The impact that my injury and subsequent surgeries had on my career was immense, but more importantly, the fallout proved to be devastating to some of the closest relationships in my life.”

Chris left Saturday Night Live in 2003 after seven years on the show. You can read more about what happened on Variety.com.