Tracy Morgan walked out to a standing ovation Sunday night at the 2015 Emmy Awards.
It was the first time he was onstage since being involved in a fatal vehicle accident in June 2014 that took the life of his friend and comedian James McNair. The accident left Morgan with serious brain and bodily injuries—including being in a coma for eight days. It took him over a year to recuperate.
"I miss you guys so much," Morgan said, his voice cracking, as the audience cheered.
"Thanks to my amazing doctors and the support of my family, my beautiful new wife, I'm here," he said. He thanked his Hollywood peers and the public at large for sending warm thoughts and prayers his way.
But it wouldn't be Tracy Morgan if he didn't get to the comedy.
"Only recently I've started to feel like myself, which means a whole lot of y'all women are going to get pregnant at the after-party," Morgan quipped while the audience laughed. "It's going down."
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter after he appeared at the Emmys, Morgan spoke about his hard road to recovery.
"Right now I'm feeling good. But I have my good days and I have my bad days. Sometimes on my bad days, I get really frustrated. Sometimes I lock myself away in a room until I calm down. Overall, though, I feel blessed that I'm alive, and that's the bottom line," Morgan said.
He said that his publicist thought it would be a great idea to have his peers welcome him back on the Emmy stage.
"This was my publicist Lewis Kay's idea. He said, 'What you want to do is let Hollywood welcome you home.' And I loved that idea. I loved the idea of getting back with my community, the show business community. I loved it."
We missed you too, Tracy. Welcome home.
For more of black Twitter, check out The Chatterati on The Root and follow The Chatterati on Twitter.
Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.
Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
DISCUSSION