Tracy Morgan says he’s doing OK after an incident in New York City on Monday night left fans wondering about his health issues. The comedian was sitting court side at a March 17 Knicks game at Madison Square Garden when he began vomiting at his seat, delaying the game for more than 10 minutes.
In videos and photos circulating online, Morgan holds a towel to his face as he’s escorted from the court in a wheelchair.
On Tuesday, Morgan shared an update on Instagram. “Thank you for all your concern! I’m doing ok now and doctors say it was food poisoning,” he wrote as the caption for a photo of himself in a hospital bed. “Appreciate my MSG family for taking such good care of me and I need to shout out the crew that had to clean that up. Appreciate you!”
In true Morgan fashion, he ended the update with some levity suggesting his illness was a good luck charm: “More importantly, the Knicks are now 1-0 when I throw up on the court so maybe I’ll have to break it out again in the playoffs.”
This isn’t the first time Morgan has opened up about his health. The 56-year-old has dealt with a series of serious health concerns and accidents that he’s long been candid about. Here’s what to know about his health issues.
He has diabetes
Morgan was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1996. But he didn’t take his diagnosis seriously right away, Morgan said in a 2009 interview with Time, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“Then one day I got really sick,” the actor told the magazine. “The doctor was like, ‘Hey, listen, we may have to take your foot.’ That was it for me. Now I take my insulin every day. My blood sugar doesn’t get over 120.”
He had a kidney transplant
The comedian quietly underwent a kidney transplant in 2010. His donor was his then-girlfriend, Tanisha Hall, Essence reported.
Though the surgery was successful — he attended a Knicks game a few days later, Entertainment Weekly reported — Morgan took some time off from filming “30 Rock” as he recovered.
While Morgan hasn’t shared why he needed the transplant, diabetes can affect the kidneys. If diabetes is left untreated, someone might develop diabetes-related nephropathy, a condition that deteriorates kidney function, according to the Cleveland Clinic. This can lead to kidney failure.
He was in a near-fatal car accident that left him in a coma
On June 7, 2014, Morgan was involved in a car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike when a Walmart truck rear-ended his limousine. Morgan’s friend and mentor, James McNair, who was 62 years old, died in the crash. The car accident left Morgan in critical condition and a coma with a broken leg.
According to a criminal complaint, the Walmart truck driver hadn’t slept in more than 24 hours, the Associated Press reported. The driver, who was driving above the speed limit the minute before the accident, swerved to avoid a crash and hit Morgan’s limo instead.
“I don’t remember the accident,” Morgan said during a 2016 interview with TODAY. He only remembered coming to and seeing his family and friends surrounding him at the hospital.
It wasn’t until two weeks after he woke up that his fiancée told him McNair had died. “He was a close friend of mine, a comrade in comedy. He was a loving man, and he was a warm man. He was a good man. It just hurts me to see that he’s gone,” Morgan said of McNair during the interview. “Bones heal but the loss of my friend will never heal.”
As a coping mechanism and as a way of honoring his friend, Morgan would watch footage of the crash. “Every day I would just watch the accident on YouTube, and one day, I came across his funeral on YouTube and I just — I lost it for about a week.” This ritual was part of his therapy, he told Oprah Winfrey.
As for his injuries, Morgan walked with the help of a cane as his leg healed, and he had symptoms from his traumatic brain injury. “There are times when I have my good days and my bad days and I forget things,” Morgan said on TODAY. “There are times where I have the headaches and the nosebleeds, and I won’t even let my lady know because I don’t want her to be worried about it. But I have my good days and my bad days.”
Walmart, Morgan and his lawyer confirmed, took full responsibility for the accident.
He’s used Ozempic
The comedian revealed he was taking the diabetes drug, now commonly prescribed off-label for weight loss, in 2023.
During an interview on TODAY’s Hoda & Jenna, the hosts shouted out his physique, saying he’d clearly been “working on his body and his health,” which Morgan quickly shut down. “No, that’s Ozempic,” he quipped.
“That’s how this weight got lost,” he added. When they didn’t believe him, he doubled down, offering more details. “I went and got a prescription, and I got Ozempic. And I ain’t letting it go.”
Morgan also shared that he wakes up at 7 a.m. to work out and then goes back to sleep.
During a 2024 appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Morgan said he’d learned to “out-eat” Ozempic and gained 40 pounds. He later clarified in an interview with E! News that he was joking, explaining, “Ozempic did great by me and I was glad to use it.”
He had pneumonia
During an appearance on “The View” in 2019, Morgan revealed he had pneumonia like the show’s co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who’d recently recovered from double pneumonia and sepsis.
“I had pneumonia when I was doing ‘30 Rock,’” Morgan shared. When asked how he handled it, he said, “I’m here. I’m with y’all. Fight. Fight. … Listen, you don’t have to have pneumonia, you don’t have to get hit by a truck, you don’t have to get shot, you don’t (have to) get stabbed. You, God forbid, lay down in your bed and just not wake up. So, your best bet is to just run your race,” he said.
He’s struggled with addiction
Morgan has said he was part of the lost generation that grew up surrounded by AIDS and drug use in the ’80s. He told Winfrey during an interview, “You were either using (drugs) or you were selling it. Either way, you got swept up in it.”
Morgan started selling drugs at 15 or 16 years old, he recalled, and family “took (him) out of that,” most notably his first wife, he said. One day, she came across drugs in their home and threatened to call the police on Morgan. “That was the end of it,” he said.
This moment also prompted him to reevaluate his alcohol use. “I just one day quit,” he said on the Friend of Jerry podcast. “Cigarettes, weed, alcohol. I just quit.”
Before then, Morgan had struggled with alcoholism. He found himself drinking more and more as he rose to stardom. “When you’re famous and funny, every time you go into the club, there is always somebody going, ‘Can I get you a drink? Can I get you a drink?’” Morgan said during an interview on Kitchen Talk.
“I’m an alcoholic,” he said, revealing that in one year he had two DUIs. “I thank the Lord I didn’t lose my legs and I didn’t kill nobody and I ain’t go to jail,” he said. He’s been sober for nearly 30 years, according to USA TODAY.
