‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend endured eight days in a coma during the health crisis.

Chevy Chase endured a “life-threatening” heart failure that caused him being placed in an induced coma during the pandemic, as revealed in a new documentary project about the comedy star.

The film, titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

“There was a problem, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we went 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.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a coma for more than a week, before warning his daughter, Caley: “We might not get him back. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. Get ready for the worst.”

“After regaining consciousness, all he could do was use his voice,” she stated further. “He has essentially returned from the dead.”

He himself has revealed that he has suffered recall difficulties since his hospitalisation, and in the project he fails to recall some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

Chase said he was “hurt” by his exclusion from the milestone special of SNL recently, at which he was in the crowd but not participating.

“To be frank, it was disappointing,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman were called up, I was curious as to why I didn’t. There was no invitation. Why was I excluded?”

The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which precipitated a period of severe depression.