Jeremy Renner credits returning to 'Mayor of Kingstown' for helping him recover after near-fatal snowplow accident

For Jeremy Renner, getting back to his Paramount+ series Mayor of Kingstown after a devastating snowplow accident in January 2023 was an important step in his recovery — literally.

“I knew how exhausting it is, even when I’m perfectly healthy,” he told Yahoo Entertainment about starring in and executive producing the series, which launches its third season on June 2. “I can maybe walk 100 yards normal. But what’s my endurance? My endurance was crap.”

On Jan. 1, 2023, the Mayor of Kingstown star, 53, who is also known for his Hawkeye role in Marvel’s Avengers franchise, got run over by his 14,000-lb. snowplow at his home in Nevada.

Renner was airlifted to the hospital and sustained multiple broken bones, chest trauma and a collapsed lung. Getting back on two feet alone was going to be a long road.

After a solid year of physical therapy and recovery, the Oscar-nominated actor and father of one began production on the Kingstown crime drama, which is about a family of power brokers in Michigan who work as mediators between the local prison, law enforcement and gangs.

Asking himself “How do I come back” a year after the accident, Renner said he realized the show itself could be a motivator.

“This is my ‘getting outside the front gate,’” he said. “Stop just doing recovery and just go out and live life, do life stuff. And let that be part of the recovery.”

In January 2024, Renner rejoined the production and is now ready to launch Season 3 a mere five months later. He credits the show itself and his devotion to character Mike McLusky, aka the titular mayor, for helping him on that journey.

“You gotta just take the Band-Aid off … and go for it”

While he concedes that his work on the show requires a lot of effort, and there’s a lot he has to shoulder, Renner also said that he has had a lot of support from his team.

“I had a lot of people helping, listening to my body as much as I had to listen to my body. And we did it as a unit. It took all of us to kind of get through it,” he said.

“You gotta just take the Band-Aid off, right, and go for it,” he added. “Like anything, you’ve got to be courageous enough. What am I going to do, just fail?”

Failure, for Renner, was not an option. He knew the show — and its future — affected more people than just him alone.

“Then everybody’s out of a job. That sucks,” he said. “And we’re not going to allow that to happen either, especially after the long break that a lot of people had with the strikes — the writers’ strike, the actors’ strike — and there's a lot of people out of a job for a long time. So that was also really important to me — to get people employed again. And important for me to get on my feet again.”

A “safe landing spot”

The show itself, which doesn’t shy away from violence, has been called “dark” by critics.

“I wouldn’t disagree,” Renner said. “I do like dark. But my argument always is the safe landing spot for our audience. For me, when I watch it, I'm like, I need time to breathe a little moment away from the chaos — the death, the destruction, the fires, explosions, all this stuff, right? Give us a reason to care more, to fall for our characters more or to feel more for our main players. Well, on Season 3, I think we get a lot more of that.”

So, how’s the actor feeling now?

“Feeling strong, feeling happy,” he said, “and proud.”

Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 starts streaming on Paramount+ June 2.