Kevin Smith’s new TV show was inspired by his near-fatal heart attack.
The ‘Clerks’ director was rushed to hospital and underwent emergency surgery in February after falling ill while filming a comedy special in California and he admitted his brush with death made him press forward with his idea for ‘Hollyweed’, when he previously would have just shelved the project.
He admitted: "’Hollyweed’ was a plate that I started spinning two-and-a-half years ago, and I honestly thought, ‘Oh that’s it, I’ll never touch it again.’
"Now we’re getting to kinda go back to it, and it’s exciting. It happened at a time, right after I had the heart attack. So that kinda fuelled it for me.
"I used to be like, ‘Well, it didn’t work, I don’t wanna bother anybody with this anymore. I’ll just kind of sulk away. And after the heart attack, I was like, ‘F**k it, I almost died, like, let’s do everything.’ And so, the idea of doing this show falls squarely in the crotch of that."
Since his heart attack, the 47-year-old star has lost a staggering 43lbs but he admitted he had always accepted he would just be a "fat" adult until his health scare.
He told ‘Entertainment Tonight’: "I just assumed I’d be fat my whole life and I’d never see my high school weight again or any of those things.
"I’m 47 years old, so that was all in my rear view. But after the heart attack, suddenly I was like, alright, I never want to be back in that room again with someone going up my groin to get to my heart through my femoral artery, telling me that there is a 20 percent chance that I will live, and 80 percent chance I’ll die."
The ‘Yoga Hosers’ filmmaker recently opened up about the "beautiful" messages of support he’d received after his heart attack – though he also admitted it felt like he’d attended his "own wake".
He said: "It’s been beautiful. Honestly, it’s kind of like I got to attend my own wake, because I lived through it. People wrote the nicest things. I live on the internet. I’ve been a creature of the internet since like 1995. So I was always keeping an eye out for the people who were like, ‘The only sad part of this story is that he f***ing survived.’ But there wasn’t any of that. If I can just keep my nose clean until the day I die, this is a real preview of what it’ll be like. People weren’t dancing on my grave, there was genuine f***ing concern."
Kevin Smith inspired by heart attack
