He’s fine now, but for a while there it looked pretty bleak for Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snow plowing accident. Scarlett Johansson, who recently departed the MCU, said she has a group chat with the six OG Avengers and that they all came together to support Renner, with two of them even having a reunion of sorts in the hospital.
In a deep dive with the starlet in Variety, she revealed just how she reacted upon hearing the news of Renner’s injury, and how the Avengers actors all came together to help and support their friend in need.
“I was very upset,” she said about hearing the news. Renner was run over by a seven-ton snowcat in a reported attempt to help a neighbor who was stranded. The accident was no joke – he broke 30 bones and suffered blunt force trauma to his chest, as well as various orthopedic ailments. Fortunately, after the initial few days, he started to get better.
Johansson took solace to a text chain that included all six original Avengers: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Evans, Renner, Robert Downey Jr., and Johansson.
“On the Avengers text chain, we’re like, ‘OK, you beat us all. That’s it. You won,’” she told Variety. “That’s like real superhero stuff. It’s unbelievable.”
Johansson actually visited Renner in the hospital with Evans, and when they saw him it was a pleasant experience, and not a morose one. Evans said there were “no tears at all.”
‘[It was a] lot of laughs and smiles and hugs. Leave it to Jeremy to take something this potentially tragic and turn it into something so inspiring.”
Johansson said she couldn’t approach the reunion in such a cavalier way. When she saw Renner, she went through so many emotions, she said, but mostly she was just glad to see her friend alive and recovering.
“I was honestly so f**king happy to see him. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again. To not only see him again but to see him thriving and in such an amazing space, mentally. He’s a very spiritual person in general and a very soulful person. And you can see that in his work. It comes through. He has such a depth to him. And I just was so happy to see that he is full of life and light, and he’s also hilarious. We laughed a lot.”
Evans and Johansson may never fight side-by-side as Avengers again, but they recently signed on to star in an upcoming movie called Project Artemis, to be directed by Jason Bateman. There’s no release date just yet, but we’ll keep you posted.
