Medics Thought Jim Carrey’s Gallbladder Attack on the Set of ‘Dumb and Dumber’ Was a Joke

This month marks 30 years since the release of Dumb and Dumber, the greatest movie ever made in which Jeff Daniels suffers from explosive diarrhea.

Apart from the fact that it was filmed in a famously haunted hotel (as in, the most famous haunted hotel), one would assume that the making of this goofy comedy would be a pretty smooth ride, right? Well, not exactly. Star Jim Carrey had a significant medical episode during production. Unfortunately for Carrey, the professionals tasked with saving his life first assumed that his medical emergency was just more Ace Ventura-like shtick.

In honor of Dumb and Dumber’s 30th, People spoke with Karen "Duff" Duffy, the actress who played J.P. Shay, one of the hitmen who follows Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne across the country. 

Duffy claimed that the cast and crew had a “blast” during the making of the film, but noted that one day was far less fun. While filming on location at an airport, Carrey suddenly collapsed. “Jim doubled over and was rolling around,” Duffy explained, “and the reaction from pretty much everybody on set was, ‘Oh, this is a prank. This is just Jim monkeying around.’”

Even the on-set medic questioned Carrey’s discomfort, asking, “Is this for real?” After Carrey finally convinced everyone that he wasn’t joking around, he was wheeled off the set and taken to the hospital. It turned out that Carrey had suffered a gallbladder attack. As Rolling Stone reported at the time, production shut down and Carrey was hospitalized for four days.

Of course, it’s hard to fault anybody for not taking Carrey’s behavior at face value, not just because he built his career on wild gesticulations, but because he’s pulled a ton of pranks on people. For example, Damon Wayans Jr. recently recalled how, when he was a kid, Carrey once hid in a tree and flung himself onto the windshield of the Wayans family car.

And then there are all the pranks he played while supposedly in character as Andy Kaufman during the filming of Man on the Moon. Like how he once lured Norm Macdonald to the Psycho house on the Universal Studios lot, and had an actor dressed like Norman Bates give Macdonald a real-life jumpscare. Then there was the time that Jim as Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton locked Danny DeVito in his trailer, then parked a car in front of the door, and threw the key into the Los Angeles River.

In retrospect, faking a gallbladder attack probably would have been one of Carrey’s least crazy pranks, so it’s no wonder people were skeptical. 

Hopefully, if Carrey is ever present at the scene of a fire and detects smoke, people will take him seriously and won’t just assume that he’s doing lines from The Mask.