Ladder safety is no laughing matter.
Saturday Night Live vet Jorma Taccone, a member of The Lonely Island comedy troupe, shattered his pelvis and detached his sacrum in a fall from a 20-foot ladder at his farmhouse in Connecticut.
The accident was on Aug. 31, his daughter’s 5th birthday. “It wasn’t the coolest way to start the day,” Taccone said.
Taccone, 48, recounted the scary incident from his hospital bed during Tuesday’s episode of The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow Lonely Island members Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer and late-night talk show host Seth Meyers.
“There’s a barn, and the back half of the barn has a big white wall. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. We can do a big mural.’”
Taccone said that he borrowed ladders to hang lights around the barn to highlight the mural when he fell 20 feet onto his butt. “I literally have enough time as I’m falling to be like, ‘I’m going to die,’” he said.
While the injuries were serious, Taccone said his doctors expect him to walk again within three to six months, which was a huge relief to his Lonely Island colleagues – friends since childhood.
“It’s been a really scary week, and we’re glad that you didn’t hit your head and that you’re not dead,” Schaffer said.
The Lonely Island have proved highly successful at blending music and comedy. They put seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100, topped by “I Just Had Sex” (featuring Akon), which reached No. 30 in 2011. Their other Hot 100 hits featured T-Pain, Nicki Minaj, Michael Bolton, Adam Levine & Kendrick Lamar and Tegan & Sara.
They released three studio albums, all of which made the top 15 on the Billboard 200: Incredibad (No. 13 in 2009), Turtleneck & Chain (No. 3 in 2011) and The Wack Album (No. 10 in 2013).
In February 2025, the group performed a medley of their greatest hits on SNL50: The Homecoming Concert.
They won a Primetime Emmy for co-writing “Dick in a Box,” which Justin Timberlake and Samberg performed on SNL in 2007. They subsequently received five additional Primetime Emmy nods for outstanding music & lyrics for co-writing “Motherlover,” “Shy Ronnie,” “I Just Had Sex,” “Jack Sparrow” and “3-Way (The Golden Rule).”
They also received three Grammy nominations: best rap/sung collaboration for “I’m on a Boat” (featuring T-Pain), best comedy album for Turtleneck & Chain, and best song written for visual media for “Everything Is Awesome!!!,” on which they backed Tegan & Sara. They wrote the latter song for The Lego Movie.
Taccone has also received four Primetime Emmy nods for writing for SNL and one as an executive producer of Pen15, which was nominated for outstanding comedy series in 2021.
In 2010, Taccone co-wrote and directed MacGruber, which was his directorial debut. He directed his second feature alongside Schaffer, the musical comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which he also co-wrote and co-starred in with Schaffer and Samberg.
Taccone’s latest film Over Your Dead Body, which he directed, was acquired by IFC in May, according to Deadline.