Jeremy Renner says his daughter had to ‘grow up quickly’ after his accident (exclusive)

Back from the brink of death and determined to be better than ever, Jeremy Renner met with “Extra’s” Billy Bush in NYC to talk about Season 3 of “Mayor of Kingstown” and his ongoing recovery from a freak snowplow accident 16 months ago.

Jeremy said the accident forced him and his daughter to “grow up pretty quickly.” He also spoke about how the ordeal of overcoming death made him more connected to other people.

How is he doing today? Renner shared, “I feel like I’m patched up and back on my feet,” adding that he used the show as a “platform to come back strong” and that he “doesn’t have to worry about anything other than his recovery and then the show. I keep my life pretty simple.”

In the series, Renner runs a frosty town in Michigan, but he actually filmed the episodes in Pennsylvania.

Billy said, “I bet you’ve been wondering, ‘How am I going to make it to Pittsburgh in January, where it’s so freezing cold, to play a really physical role there?'”

He replied, “Yes, that’s true, and to be honest, it was more like, ‘I’m doing fiction.’ There’s nothing fictional in my life. This is the true reality of trying to survive… There’s no pretending… because I’m (in) the true reality.”

That reality made him wonder, “Can I operate on these legs again and breathe properly? And all those things. For a moment, that was so far away, and then when it was, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s been a year,’ I still didn’t know. Do I have that in me?”

He continued, “It’s very hard to deal with the pain and put your body back into surgery. It requires a lot of brain power and I just didn’t have the energy… I just didn’t have it. I lost my breath in the first half hour, hour of the day. ‘How am I supposed to be on set for 10 to 12 hours… and run the show and be on the show?'”

Jeremy said: “I was really nervous. ‘Am I capable of doing this?’ I kept asking myself that, but a lot of people helped me… They really had to schedule me like a minor on a film set, a certain number of hours a day, otherwise I would fall asleep. It was bad, but then I got stronger and stronger because they gave me time to recover, and now I’m here, we did it on Friday and now I’m in much better shape. I’ve been able to train and I’ve got all these testosterone levels.”

Billy asked him what his training looks like these days.

He replied, “Running is hard. I don’t do it for exercise. I do it for my joints and stuff. Uphill and downhill and stuff like that, but not for endurance. I can’t do it for endurance. My joints aren’t strong enough yet, but I’ll get there. I’ll get to a point where I can do it. I lift a lot of weight.”

Billy asked what it means to start a new phase in life and how it affected him.

Renner explained, “To be honest, brother, I think everybody’s in it… I didn’t do this alone, did I?… What I’ve overcome is what I’ve overcome, and that’s fine, but it still took the collective energy of everybody. That’s all of our story, as much as it is mine, and because of that, I’ve found that I feel more connected to people. I feel like they see me for the man that I am, rather than the famous guy that I’m famous for.”

Bush asked Jeremy about his 11-year-old daughter Ava.

“We had to grow up pretty quickly in our relationship and we got through it together,” Jeremy said. “She listened to my advice. She waited for me. I was getting better. She has a real reason why I should be getting better. The better I was physically, the less scared she was… because she was very scared of breaking 38 bones and all that stuff. I said, ‘Just be careful. I’m getting better every week.'”

Jeremy spoke about how hard it was for Ava to see him right after the accident, and continued, “You can imagine. That’s why I say just be patient and I’ll get better… it’s also about my mom and my sister, and my poor nephew had to hold my arm and see me as I was. And the better I got, the better they were able to heal, too, because it wasn’t just me. Right? It happened to a lot of people.”

He said: “Now I’m a guy who has overcome death, and there’s something really cool about that, Billy. I tell you what, man, it really connects me more with people… I really like being around people. It allows me to really be around people and talk to them in a real way. Pretty cool, man. Pretty damn cool, I have to say.”