Adam Devine's Tragic True Life Story
Adam Devine rose to prominence on the Comedy Central sitcom "Workaholics," a cult stoner comedy that aired between 2011 and 2017. Since then, the actor has built up an impressive resume, appearing in several TV shows and some high profile movies. His most notable role is that of Bumper Allen in the "Pitch Perfect" franchise. He's also made memorable guest appearances in series such as "Arrested Development," "Community," and "Modern Family."
Everyone knows that Devine is a funny guy, but less people know about the trials and tribulations he's gone through over the years. A tragic event in his childhood went on to shape his upbringing and inspire his pursuit of comedy, changing his outlook on life for good. Like many other artists trying to carve out a career in Hollywood, Devine has had to face rejection, uncertainty, and financial hardships, but he's also had to overcome things that many would find insurmountable. We're taking a look at his tragic true life story.
Adam Devine almost died in a childhood accident
Perhaps the most significant moment of Adam Devine's life happened when he was only 11 years old. Back before he discovered his passion for comedy, Devine aspired to be a baseball player, but the chances of that becoming a reality took a huge hit one dreadful summer. He was on his way to buy candy from a convenience store (and also tear some pages from a Penthouse magazine, he admitted) when he walked out into the road with his bike by his side. He was struck by a cement truck and dragged some 500 feet down the street, he told Entertainment Weekly.
"One buddy was across the street. He yelled 'Come on!' as in 'I'm excited to go look at boobs!' And I heard 'Come on!' as in 'The coast is clear!'" he said. "They say the reason I lived was the bike took the hit first." His injuries were so severe that he had to be put into a medically induced coma. The accident broke every bone in both of his legs aside from his right femur, as well as his ribs. He was also left with punctured lungs, he told Off Camera with Sam Jones.
During an appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, the actor revealed that he doesn't really remember much about the accident itself because he "went into shock." He explained how the gravity of the situation only really sunk in when his family arrived at the hospital and saw how badly he was hurt. "Every adult in my life is standing over me just crying," he recalled. "My dad is like a tough guy. Never saw him cry and then he's like shaking and bawling. That's when I knew it was real."
He needed dozens of different surgeries
The years following Adam Devine's cement truck accident weren't easy on the future comedian. He had to work hard to regain his mobility, telling KETV in Omaha, "It was really tough because I had to relearn how to walk, stand up, sit up, and everything." He underwent as many as 27 different surgeries, meaning he spent a lot of time in wheelchairs. He was determined to heal, however, and — remarkably given the extent of his injuries — he was playing football by the time he reached 8th grade.
"I bounced back," he said during his candid interview on Off Camera with Sam Jones. "I was bad. I was a really bad football player." Devine went on to explain that one of the conditions of him playing football at school was that he had to wear extra protective layers. "Not only did I wear all the pads that they make you wear in football, my mom made me wear arm guards — my arms weren't hurt! I'm wearing arm guards, I'm wearing shin guards, I'm fully padded up."
Comedy became his safety blanket
After his accident, Adam Devine found comfort in a place where many people find it: comedy. He spent a lot of time watching movies and "Saturday Night Live" sketches, honing his skills. After a while, he began to look at his accident as a blessing. "I'm glad that it happened to me. It really gave me a driving force," he told Entertainment Weekly. "A lot of comics say that something traumatic happened in their lives, that sort of pushes them in this direction."
During this time, Devine began calling a local radio station and doing impressions live on air. They were so impressed that they wanted to give him a job, but were forced to retract the offer when his mother took him to the station and they realized he was a child — they thought he was a lot older, as Devine explained on Off Camera with Sam Jones. He carried on calling the station and was paid via CDs and concert tickets.
Devine was able to use his comedy to hit back at bullies when he returned to school. He began to keep notebooks where he would write down funny quips and comebacks, meaning he was always prepared for some verbal sparring. This exercise was encouraged by Devine's father. "My dad was like, 'You can't get into fights so you gotta punch them back with your words, think of some funny things to say back to them,'" the actor said on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.
Adam Devine got into UCLA but couldn't afford the fees
By the time Adam Devine graduated high school, he had made a full recovery from his injuries. Like many aspiring comedians, he set his sights on moving to Los Angeles. He arrived in town when he was just 18 years old, but things didn't go smoothly. "I got into UCLA, but my family couldn't afford it," he told The Guardian. "So I was going to move out there and go to community college, get my residency, because it's a lot cheaper."
He opted for Orange Coast Community College, which is where he met Kyle Newacheck and Blake Anderson. The three would go on to create "Workaholics" together, but at the time Devine was busy trying to make it on the club circuit. "I started doing stand-up and I thought: 'I'm a professional comedian,' but I wasn't at all — I was doing open-mics and $15 shows," he said. Eventually, Devine, Newacheck, and Anderson formed their own comedy troupe called Mail Order Comedy and began touring the country.
He almost blew his Pitch Perfect audition
With the success of "Workaholics" came new opportunities for Adam Devine, including "Pitch Perfect." The first film in the popular franchise — released in 2012 and starring Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, and Rebel Wilson — centers on an all-female a cappella team competing against their male counterparts in singing tournaments. Devine plays Bumper Allen, the arrogant antagonist. He's the leader of another a cappella team and recurs throughout the franchise.
It's the role he's arguably most famous for, but Devine almost didn't get it — he nearly blew his audition. As he revealed on "The Late Late Show with James Corden," he mistakenly thought "Pitch Perfect" was a baseball movie. "I swear to God, I honestly did," he said. "I showed up and there was all these handsome dudes there and they're not stretching, you know. I'm over there stretching and I'm like, 'You're gonna pull something, idiot.'"
Devine was totally blindsided when he was asked to perform a song. Not wanting to get kicked out of the room, he did an impromptu rendition of the "Full House" theme. He understandably thought the audition was a disaster, but he somehow pulled it off. Devine was offered the part of Bumper, which proved to be the launching pad he had been waiting for in Hollywood. He would later reprise the role in the Peacock series "Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin," which premiered in 2022.
He's had his fair share of bad dates
Adam Devine has played his fair share of unlucky guys, most notably in films like "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates" and "When We First Met." In interviews, Devine has admitted to having a complicated romantic history himself, telling The Hollywood Reporter of one first-date-gone-wrong. "I did go on this date with this girl that I met online, and I should have known that she was gonna be crazy," he said, recounting how she revealed on the date that she makes superhero fetish videos.
Thankfully, Devine has been luckier in recent years. In 2015, he began dating his "The Final Girls" co-star Chloe Bridges, although the sparks didn't exactly fly when they first met. In an interview with Vogue, Devine admitted that he totally ignored her when they met on a flight to the shoot because he was intimidated. "I was scared of Chloe's beauty," he said. "Chloe thought I was big-timing her."
Since they've been together, Bridges has had nothing but wonderful things to say about Devine. The pair got engaged in 2019, but their wedding plans were unfortunately thrown off by the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020. The duo eventually tied the knot in October 2021, though they almost had to cancel the whole thing after they both caught COVID a few weeks before the wedding was set to take place. Thankfully, they were able to recover in time.
His first meeting with Danny McBride was humiliating
Adam Devine returned to television with HBO's "The Righteous Gemstones" in 2019, co-starring with the show's co-creator Danny McBride. He plays the youngest son in a televangelist dynasty. The two comedians are great together on screen, but they actually already knew each other before Devine landed the part of Kelvin Gemstone. They first crossed paths at an afterparty for the 2014 Seth Rogen film "Neighbors," in which Devine made a cameo appearance. As Devine recounted to The Hollywood Reporter, he and Rogen were smoking weed together in a hotel room when McBride walked in and immediately recognized a starstruck Devine from his work.
"McBride comes in and he grabs me by my shoulders and is like 'Oh, I know this little man.' First of all, I'm medium-sized so I should have been offended, but I'm such a fan of his, and I turned around and I go, 'You're Danny McBride!' And he goes, 'Yeah, man.' And I go, 'You're a bright shooting star.' I was so high that's what I said to him. And he was like, 'Uh, okay man." Devine was so embarrassed by his bizarre reaction to meeting McBride that he left the party. When he asked McBride if he remembered the incident on the set of "The Righteous Gemstones," he didn't know what he was talking about. "He's like, 'No. I think I was pretty high at the party, too.'"
He's had a number of projects canceled in recent years
Fans of Adam Devine's "Pitch Perfect" character were no doubt thrilled when it was revealed that he was going to star in a spin-off show, and they were likely equally as excited when "Bumper in Berlin" was renewed for a second season at Peacock. Unfortunately for them — and for Devine himself — the second season was scuppered by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, which essentially shut down Hollywood. "Bumper in Berlin" was considered a success by execs (the opening episode was the "biggest comedy premiere in the streamer's history," Deadline reported), but all the production delays meant that Peacock's pipeline was just too jammed and something had to give. Sadly, this isn't the only big project that Devine has seen axed in the last few years.
In 2021, it was announced that Devine and his "Workaholics" co-stars would be reuniting for a film that was set to drop on Paramount+, but the streamer pulled the plug just weeks before the shoot was scheduled to get underway. Devine was clearly upset by the news, taking to Instagram to explain what had happened. He wrote that Paramount+ bosses "told us we don't fit their new 'global' strategy," adding, "We are deeply butt hurt about this decision because we were so excited to bring the weird one last time. I'm butt hurt that I don't get to work with my best friends again. I'm butt hurt for the fans, and I'm butt hurt for our loyal crew, and other cast members who are now going to have to scramble to find new jobs."
His dad had lung cancer
While the "Workaholics" movie doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon, fans of the series can catch up with the former Mail Order Comedy troupe via their podcast This Is Important. Compared to the absurdist nature of "Workaholics," the podcast is more down to Earth. Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, Anders Holm, and Kyle Newacheck often get candid about their personal lives, like when Devine opened up about his father's lung cancer diagnosis. According to Devine, his dad was lucky in that he was diagnosed early.
"Usually with lung cancer you don't find it until it's too late," he said. "So we got lucky in the fact that his voice went out. It has to be in a certain lymph node. They said it's like the fourth lymph node in your neck, and there's a bunch of them there." He went on to explain how his father had put some weight on following the diagnosis, but that this was a good thing. "You usually end up losing a lot of weight," he said. "Because you're sick, and you don't want to eat, or you can't physically eat because of the chemo and the radiation."
Devine has also opened up about his dad's health scare on social media. In 2022, on Father's Day, he posted about him beating the cancer on Instagram, confirming that he was in remission. "I never thought about him not being apart of my life and it shook me to my core," he said. "As I post this I think of all the people who have lost their fathers and how hard today must be for them."
Adam Devine still deals with chronic pain as an adult
Adam Devine has overcome great odds to get to where he is today. He's now a successful Hollywood actor, a happily married man, and he will soon be able to add father to that list — in October 2023, he and Chloe Bridges revealed that they are expecting their first child together. Devine made the announcement on Instagram, writing, "This will mostly be a baby page now, as I will be dedicating my life to my child in hopes he doesn't use my decades of recorded dirty jokes against me." Everything worked out great for the actor, but what you may not know is that he's still suffering from health issues to this day.
In 2023, Devine was in and out of hospital for a variety of treatments, his wife confirmed via her Instagram stories. "He saw 11 different doctors, including a rheumatologist, two neurologists, two pain management specialists, three orthopedic surgeons, and a soft tissue specialist," Chloe Bridges told her followers. "He had 10 MRIs, three PRP shots, twice a week physical therapy, acupuncture, a few epidurals, and two surgeries." She added that, after all of this, the professionals "still can't figure out what's wrong with him," explaining that "his pain moves around and he has unexplained muscle spasms throughout his body."
A murder took place near Adam Devine's house
On June 7, 2023, a murder took place near the home Adam Devine shares with his wife in the Hollywood Hills. Devine discussed the incident on the This Is Important podcast (via People), revealing that he and his wife often witnessed gatherings at the property in question with guests "rolling up in like Lamborghinis and Bentleys and Rolls-Royces." He added: "I see these dudes and it is fun to sit and watch." According to Devine, the night of the murder was a "crazy poker game" gone wrong. The victim was a 39-year-old man from Florida, said CBS News, which also revealed that the shooting took place at approximately 2am.
CBS initially reported that Devine had witnessed the murder, but the actor later confirmed that he didn't actually see it happen. "To be clear I DID NOT WITNESS the murder at my neighbors house!" he said on X, formerly Twitter. "The news keeps saying I saw it! I didn't. I wasn't even in LA. The neighbor throws a party (assuming poker) every Tuesday night. I've seen the clientele in previous weeks. That's all." Devine also insisted that he didn't see anything on Steve-O's podcast Steve-O's Wild Ride, saying, "I don't want any psychopath out there being like 'They've witnessed it, we've gotta go back.'"