‘He was brought back from the edge’: Chevy Chase was in eight days in a coma during Covid pandemic.

Chevy Chase endured a “life-threatening” heart failure that resulted in him being put into an medically induced coma during the pandemic, according to a new documentary project about the entertainment icon.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

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

Medical professionals then put him into a coma for eight days, before cautioning his child, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We are unsure how aware he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he could do was use his vocal cords,” she continued. “He has essentially returned from the dead.”

He himself has said that he has suffered cognitive issues since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he fails to recall some of his past on-set and backstage controversies, including a fistfight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

Chase said he was “upset” by his omission from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL recently, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.

“To be frank, it was disappointing,” 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 and Laraine Newman took the stage, I was wondering as to why I was not. I wasn't invited. Why was I left aside?”

The 82-year-old, almost died in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which triggered a period of severe depression.