In the 1990s, there weren’t many comedians as famous as Sinbad. With his charisma, boyish smile and slap-your-knee humor, he became one of the most well-known comedians of all time. He continued working up until very recently when he suddenly appeared out of nowhere on Instagram and announced he was making a comeback, but we haven’t heard from him in about two years. So what happened?
Well, it turns out he had a very serious health issue and the prognosis wasn’t great. Before we get into that, let’s take a quick look at the comedian’s career and see why so many people are clamoring for his triumphant return.
Who is Sinbad?
Sinbad was born David Adkins in 1956 in Michigan. His father was a baptist minister and he had five siblings. He graduated from Benton Harbor High School in 1974 and then attended the University of Denver, where he played basketball. After that, he joined the United States Air Force, and he hated it.
After he didn’t make the Air Force basketball team, he told Ebony Magazine that he kept going AWOL (absent without official leave but without intent to desert) and that his mother “kept begging me to go back. I told her, “No, I’m not going back. I’ll just grow a beard. They won’t recognize me. I’ll just be another black man with a beard.” I was going to Georgia Tech to learn about computers. I’d go AWOL all the time. I’d just leave. I’d come back, hoping they’d throw me out.”
He also admitted that he “was a nut” when he was in the military. Eventually, he was thrown out for parking his car in the “wrong position.” Right after he bailed from the Air Force, his comedy career began in earnest. He performed on the show Star Search and won the show 10 times, which led to a performance on The Redd Foxx Show. From there, it was off to the races.
He appeared in The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, and a lot of critics compared him to another former favorite comedian: Bill Cosby. He told Ebony that people called him “a middle-of-the-road comic. Some of them compare me to Bill Cosby because I don’t curse. I take that as a compliment, but my style is wilder than his.” I don’t think that’s a comparison anyone would make nowadays.
Following his success in other shows, FOX gave him a sitcom of his own called The Sinbad Show in 1993, where he plays a single foster dad of two kids. From there, he appeared in movies, like the 1996 holiday gem Jingle All The Way with Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Kid with Brock Pierce. While his popularity waned a bit in the 2000s, he continued to tour and make notable appearances here and there.
He appeared in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2008 as an addict in a rehab center and in the animated Pixar movie Planes. His latest appearances before his health emergency were as Milton in the sitcom Rel, and as himself in Atlanta, and he had a voice cameo in Good Burger 2.
Sinbad’s Health Issue Bring His Career to a Halt
Sinbad suffered what’s called an ischemic stroke in 2020, and he’s pretty much been out of the spotlight since. In 2022, he shared that the stroke happened after a blood clot went from his heart into his brain. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors immediately operated. He was given a difficult surgery called a thrombectomy to get rid of the clot and get everything moving around normally.
The surgery was successful at first and Sinbad was talking and moving around, albeit with some weakness. Unfortunately, another blood clot formed the next day; this time the size of a human fist. He had to have the same surgery again. However, the surgery was successful and he was transported to Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where unfortunately doctors gave him more bad news: Now his brain was swelling.
The next procedure was a craniotomy to reduce swelling and pressure, but something went wrong and his brain started to bleed. With nothing left to do, the doctors were forced to place him in a medically induced coma and put him on a ventilator. According to his family: “Our hearts were devastated. The road to recovery became unclear and extremely difficult for the family to navigate.”
The road to recovery was brutal. It took weeks for Sinbad to open his eyes or talk. He couldn’t move anything on the left side of his body or even lift his head. It took months to get him off the ventilator and then he couldn’t start intensive rehab until May 2021. He worked hard and had to learn how to walk, move and speak all over again. By July, a whole nine months following the stroke, he was allowed to go home. His family called his progress “nothing less than remarkable” as limbs that were “dead” started coming back alive. Even more impressive is that the chances of survival from Sinbad’s situation were just 30%.
Sinbad said “I am not done. I will not stop fighting until I can walk across the stage again.” He wasn’t lying.
Sinbad is Back!
It’s been a full three years since his stroke, and he’s back! Sinbad is 67 now and his first appearance was through Zoom in an event about the sitcom he used to star in called A Different World. He posted on Instagram saying how “cool” it was to appear at the event and how “wild” it was that the students still recognized him. He thanked all the fans for their support as well.
“Thank you to everybody who’s been praying for me and saying good things and supporting me during this time in my life. It means a lot to me,” he said. “Thank you so much.” In conclusion, Sinbad had a message for everyone: “expect to see more of me soon. Miracles happen.”