Sir Ian McKellen was rushed to the hospital on Monday when the beloved actor accidentally fell off stage during a performance. McKellen, 85, was performing in a production of Player Kings at the Noël Coward Theatre in London, and amid a fight scene, he lost his footing and fell. The BBC was the first to report.
It was not immediately clear what injuries, if any, McKellen sustained in the fall. However, the theater was evacuated and the production was canceled for the evening. Player Kings is an adaptation of Parts 1 and 2 of Henry IV , with McKellen in the leading role as John Falstaff.
His run on the show has been received with universal critical acclaim. According to the BBC, the incident occurred as McKellen's Falstaff was circling a battle involving his co-lead, Toheeb Jimoh (playing Henry Percy), and he fell off the front of the stage and cried out for help. ET spoke to Veronika Muzika, who was an audience member during the incident.
Muzika said she at first thought McKellen's accident was part of the play. "So he fell down the orchestra pit just in front of our eyes and he was screaming something like, 'Help,' and I thought it was part of the play because there were a lot of wounded people, like, you know, it's a war act, and yeah, it was quite shocking," she says. "He seemed like he was moving pretty OK through the stage as normal.
I didn't see any kind of tripping. Maybe there was some slippery sort of fabric or something and it must have been something really, real.
