During the 2025 Primetime Emmy Awards, Sterling K. Brown rolled onto the stage with a knee scooter. At the time, he had mentioned the injury was due to a sporting incident on his Instagram, but he recently went into more detail about exactly what happened during his appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Brown started by saying: “I was doing this thing that middle-aged Black men do, called play basketball. I went left and then I went down. Nobody touched me. I didn’t get hit.” At first, he thought someone stepped on his foot, but the rest of the team made it clear that hadn’t happened. Then he “scooched himself off the court” to watch the rest of the game, which was being played between his sons’ coaches and high school students.
“I rooted my team on to victory because we were playing high school kids and we still won,” he said. Then he drove himself to the hospital. Since he injured his left foot, he was able to operate the vehicle without help.
He went on to explain: “I warmed up. I did all the stretching and everything, like everything that I was supposed to do, and it still just happened. My recommendation, don’t tear your Achilles. It sucks.”
Brown is celebrating his 50th birthday this April. When making an appearance on Michelle Obama’s IMO Podcast, he was asked whether he would continue to play basketball and said: “While I know I have to amend my game—I may have to do set shots, I may have to take it a little bit easier on defense—I don’t like the idea of giving something up because that is a pervasive mentality that I don’t want to invade the rest of my life.”
Brown is currently starring in the hit show Paradise on Hulu.
