J.J. Abrams Broke His Back Trying to Help Harrison Ford on the 'Star Wars' Set

Abrams and the cast and producers ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ along with Chris Hardwick at Comic-Con (Getty Images)

The accident aboard the newly rebuilt Millennium Falcon was even more disastrous than initially reported.

There was a great disturbance in The Force last year, when news broke from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens set that Harrison Ford — back aboard the old hunk of junk for the first time more than 30 years — suffered a broken leg when a door on the ship malfunctioned and fell on him. What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was also a casualty in the mishap.

“He’s down there and he’s toughing it out. He’s a super human being. He’s literally lying there making jokes,” Abrams recalled during a guest appearance on The Daily Show on Thursday night. “This door had gone down, and I’m trying to help lift it up – because that’s the kind of guy I am. I’m trying to lift up this door and I feel this pop in my back. I’m like ‘Uh, that’s weird.’”

A few days later, Abrams was told by a doctor that he’d broken a vertebrae in his back, which required him to wear a special brace on set (and, we’re guessing, do some medicine-ball exercises using BB-8). Luckily, he fully recovered, keeping the film on track for its December 18th release.

Watch the new teaser for ‘The Force Awakens’ below: