“I am a woman of the wilderness, as you know. Accidents do happen. I struck something in the dark and fell,” Judd wrote in an Instagram post Friday, adding this was a “catastrophic accident (I nearly lost my leg.)”
She offered more details in an Instagram Live interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof later in the day.
The 52-year-old “A Time to Kill” and “Kiss the Girls” actress spoke from an intensive care unit hospital bed and explained how she shattered her leg in four places and suffered nerve damage while on a trip to learn about and help endangered bonobos.
“I was doing what I always do, up at 4:30 in the morning with two of our trackers who are just these world-class, brilliant, brilliant men, walking in the dark, and my headlamp had new batteries, but it was a little faint, it wasn’t working quite properly,” she told Kristof.
“There was a fallen tree on the path which I didn’t see and I had a very powerful stride going and I just fell over this tree. As I was breaking my leg, I knew it was being broken.”
She was transported to a South African trauma unit on a motorbike since there was no ambulance service and underwent surgery.
“I’m in a lot of love. I’m in a lot of compassion and I’m in a lot of gratitude,” the actress said. “I thank everyone for their thoughts and their prayers and their support.”
