Jack Black Reveals How He Survived An On-Set Head Injury While Filming A $99 Million Movie

Jack Black has been making the rounds lately to hype up his upcoming turn in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but on a recent press stop, he took a detour down memory lane—and not the fun kind. Turns out, filming Nacho Libre left him with more than just great stories and a cult comedy credit. It also left him with an honest-to-god head injury that could have been a lot worse if not for a plastic surgeon in fancy dress. Yeah, that actually happened.

The Nacho Libre Incident: Real Wrestling, Real Pain

If you thought Nacho Libre was all padded tights and slapstick, apparently it wasn’t. Jack told Entertainment Tonight that he did a fair amount of his own wrestling stunts. During one particularly ill-fated move, he dove out of the ring, landed on a pile of wrestlers—so far, so good—and then nailed his head on a metal chair. That was definitely not in the script.

In Jack’s words:

'I played a wrestler in a movie called Nacho Libre. And we really did some real wrestling, and I really mixed it up in the ring. And I dove out of the ring at one point and landed on some wrestlers, and I hit my head on a metal chair, and I had stitches in my eyebrow.'

Not exactly the best day on set.

The Surgeon in the Ball Gown

Here’s where things get wild—in a way that only happens to Jack Black, apparently. He got stitched up by a plastic surgeon in Oaxaca, Mexico, who answered the call in the middle of the night... while still wearing a ball gown. Not making this up. She’d just come from some fancy gala but didn’t let that stop her from patching up Jack’s face right then and there.

'She came straight from a grand ball. She’s like in a ball gown. She came in, she was like, Que paso? No hay problema. No hay problema. And I laid down, and she sewed up my wounds, and the rest is history. I survived.'

Plastic surgeon by day, Cinderella by night.

Remind Me, What Was Nacho Libre?

In case your memory’s fuzzy, Nacho Libre came out in 2006 and starred Black as Ignacio, a monastery cook who moonlights as a luchador to help a bunch of orphans. It slowly picked up cult status and eventually took in $99 million worldwide on its $35 million budget—which is a pretty tidy profit for a comedy about Mexican wrestling.

The Next Level: Super Mario Galaxy Movie

• Jack Black is heading back to theaters soon with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
• He's joined by Chris Pratt, Benny Safdie, Glen Powell, Brie Larson, and Anya Taylor-Joy (yep, it’s a stacked cast).
• The movie hits theaters April 1.

So, moral of this story: Jack Black really does his own stunts (sometimes to his own detriment), and if your face ever needs repair in Oaxaca, hope there’s a fancy-dressed plastic surgeon on speed dial.