Celebrity Friends Helped Curry Get Through…
As Curry spent months in rehabilitation, recovering from his burn wounds, several of his celebrity homies and fellow comedians worked hard at helping him pull himself together emotionally and psychologically. They did so, by doing what they do best- finding the comedy behind the pain. He says they even jokingly compared him to Richard prior after Pryor’s infamous freebasing incident. It was a language Curry understood and still appreciates to this day:
“I’m in the hospital, [Bill] Cosby called me, making jokes. Damon Wayans called me, Chris Tucker [called]..all the comedians called me. All them muthaf**as joked on me,” Curry jokingly recalled.
His Biggest Surprises While In The Burn Unit…
Curry says his biggest surprise during his hospital stay, was his tremendous weight loss, which gave him a clear picture of the depth of his situation. He was typically 230 pounds, but says that because there are no mirrors in the burn unit, he had no idea he’d loss so much weight, until he attempted to wear regular clothes for the first time in there. He recalled, “The pants fell straight off…I started crying, like ‘What is going on?!!!'”
He also recalled taking a bath for the first time in a long while after being burned, which is usually extremely painful for still recovering burn victims…but for Curry, it was “like a baptism,” because he miraculously felt no pain.
These days, Mark Curry’s back to fulfilling his life’s passion as an actor and comedian. His story is a reminder of the old school saying: What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger. Best wishes to the brotha.
