Four years ago, Samuel Johnson faced one of the most harrowing moments of his life when he was struck by a car on the side of the road. The 2021 accident, which happened at night, saw the former actor and activist endure multiple fractures to the neck and skull, and glass in his lungs.
His partner, Em, quickly came to his aid, holding his head until the ambulance arrived.
“I was pretty seriously injured – it was one of those life-or-death moments,” Samuel, 47, tells TV WEEK. “I was taken to emergency and I went downhill in trauma. The doctors took my family to the death room… they didn’t see a way out for me.”
Although he didn’t know it at the time, the paramedic who came to his aid was someone already familiar to him. He was one of the team members in medical series Paramedics, which follows the daily lives and real-life cases of some of Australia’s frontline workers.
Samuel has witnessed the incredible work they do as the narrator of the program since 2018. He can also personally thank them for “literally saving my life”.
“They didn’t have the cameras rolling that night, but if they had, I could have actually been on the show,” he explains. “They looked after me in what paramedics term the ‘golden hour’, which is the critical hour between the accident and getting to the hospital.
“I’m very personally invested in them because my life has depended upon them. I owe them everything.”
With a huge heart and a dedication to helping others, Samuel puts all his efforts into Love Your Sister, a charity he co-founded in 2012 after his sister Connie, who was living with breast cancer, dared him to unicycle around Australia to raise awareness.
While she passed away in 2017, he continues the plight to help those living with cancer and has raised over $20 million for medical research since. The response and support, he says, is overwhelming.
“I get hugged in the street, people are often crying on my shoulder before I know their name and sometimes when I [go to] pay for my petrol, it’s already been paid,” he says. “I feel like I walk on a constant red carpet in this country. I get treated very well, which is different to show business.
“When I was known predominantly as an actor, before I became known as a brother, I was treated very differently. I was in the land of the tall poppy and people wanted to bring me down.
Nowadays, it’s very different. You get what you give. The more committed you are to people, the more they are to you.”
Samuel, whose performance in the biopic Molly as former Countdown host Ian “Molly” Meldrum earned him a TV WEEK Gold Logie in 2017, says he’d “be happy” to return to acting if it aligned with his charitable work.
“I would [act] if I could guarantee that it gets some eyes, but I’m more likely to choose a reality TV show that has a charity component, such as Dancing With The Stars, which really helped Love Your Sister [in 2019],” he says. “It feels good to help communities and feel like you’re part of one.”
With a second chance at life, Samuel says he’s choosing to live positively and focus on the good.
“That changed my life completely that day – it amplified everything,” he says of his accident. “I take nothing for granted, and while I may waste some minutes here and there, I don’t waste any day that I’m rewarded with.”
Paramedics airs Tuesday, 7.30pm on Nine Network
