Ian McKellen says fat suit saved him after ‘horrible’ stage fall

Ian McKellen says his fat suit “saved” him after he fell off stage during a London performance in June, though he remains in “agonising pain” while he recovers from the injuries.

The 85-year-old actor was two months into a season of Player Kings – as Shakespeare’s Falstaff – when he fell from the stage into the first row of the audience at London’s Noël Coward theatre. He subsequently withdrew from the show.

“My chipped vertebrae and fractured wrist are not yet healed,” McKellen told Saga magazine , in a new interview on Tuesday. “I avoid going out because I’m nervous someone might bump into me, and I’ve been dealing with agonising pains in my shoulders due to the jolt my body took. But the fat suit I wore for Falstaff saved my ribs and other joints, so I consider myself lucky.”

The Lord of the Rings actor said that he has “relived that fall I don’t know how many times. It was horrible.”

The fall happened during a fight scene, he said, where “my foot got caught in a chair, and trying to shake it off I started to slide on some newspaper that was scattered over the stage, like I was on a skateboard”.

He fell into the lap of “someone in the front row” and started screaming.

“It was very upsetting. The end [didn’t mean] my death. It was my participation in the play.”

McKellen said that he doesn’t feel guilty about the accident, but he continues to reassure himself that he isn’t “too old to act and it was just a bloody accident”.

“I didn’t lose consciousness, I hadn’t been dizzy, but I’ve not been able to go back,” he told Saga, adding that he remains in a neck brace and his right hand remains splinted.

Days after the injury, McKellen expressed interest in returning to the production, and thanked the “experts, specialists, and nurses” who were treating him in hospital.

A spokesperson for the Noël Coward theatre said at the time he was expected to make “a speedy and full recovery”, though he later left the show and was replaced by his understudy, David Semark.