Ian McKellen claims his wetsuit saved him after ‘horrific’ fall on stage | Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen says his fat suit “saved” him after he fell off stage during a show in London in June, although he is still in “excruciating” pain as he recovers from his injuries.

The 85-year-old actor had been performing in Player Kings for two months, playing Shakespeare’s Falstaff, when he fell off stage and into the front row of the audience at London’s Noël Coward Theatre. He subsequently withdrew from the show.

“My chipped vertebrae and fractured wrist are still healing,” McKellen told Saga magazine in a new interview Tuesday. “I avoid going out because I’m afraid someone will bump into me, and I have excruciating pain in my shoulders from the shock my body took. But the big suit I wore for Falstaff saved my ribs and other joints, so I consider myself lucky.”

The Lord of the Rings actor said he had “relived that fall I don’t know how many times. It was horrible.”

The fall happened during a fight scene, he said, where “my foot got caught in a chair and, as I tried to shake it off, I started sliding on newspaper strewn across the stage, like I was on a skateboard.”

He fell onto the lap of “someone in the front row” and started screaming.

“It was very upsetting. The ending didn’t mean my death. It was my participation in the play.”

McKellen said he doesn’t feel guilty about the accident, but he continues to reassure himself that he’s “not too old to do anything and it was just a fucking accident.”

“I didn’t lose consciousness, I didn’t feel dizzy, but I couldn’t go back,” he told Saga, adding that he remains in a neck brace and his right hand remains in a splint.

Days after his injury, McKellen expressed interest in returning to production and thanked the “experts, specialists and nurses” treating him at the hospital.

A spokesman for the Noël Coward Theatre said at the time that he was expected to make a “speedy and full” recovery, although he later left the show and was replaced by his understudy, David Semark.