Freddie Flintoff opens up about his life, career and the horrific crash which took place on the Top Gear set in his new documentary, which is now available to stream on Disney+.
Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff required five hours of surgery after crashing a car during the filming of Top Gear at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in 2022, and the new documentary, Flintoff sees the cricketer delve deeper into what really happened during the horrific crash. The Mirror takes a look at the biggest bombshells from the documentary.
In 2022, Freddie was filming for Top Gear at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in a Morgan Super 3 car with no roof which flipped. In a split second decision, the star decided to land face first, fearing that he would be killed if he broke his neck. Now, he’s opened up about what really happened as he “remembers everything”.
In the documentary, the star delved deeper into his injuries and the crash that left him fearing that his face had “come off”.
“I remember everything,” Freddie said about the horrific day. “I think about it now, back in the car, it were a three wheeler, a reinforcement windscreen and a bar covering half me back. So I’m exposed. We’re probably doing about 40 or 45, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came up at the front,” he said.
“It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s a point of no return, and everything slows down. It’s so weird.”
Speaking on his life changing facial injuries, Freddie’s surgeon Jahrad Haq said they were in the top five from his 20 years of seeing Maxillofacial trauma. “He had a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries. Broken teeth, lost teeth, elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced, Haq said, before contining: “His soft tissue injuries were also complex. He had lost a really significant portion of his upper lip, the skin and some of the underlying muscle and also his lower lip.”
During his time on Top Gear, and when the horrific crash happened, Freddie co-presented alongside former Take Me Out host Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris. The pair looked like they had great chemistry on screen, however Freddie admitted the pair have now lost contact.
“We’ve been in contact,” he says. “So Chris, we saw each other. He got upset. I got a bit upset. It was really nice to see him. I feel bad I haven’t been more in contact with him and Paddy. Part of it is for myself a little bit. I hate the word triggering, but I’m worried about that.
“It’s also something stopped, I suppose, in some ways, because of what happened to me, their careers have been altered as well. So I feel not guilty, but I feel bad for him, and also I say, what happened gets dragged up enough in my own head without adding to that.”
In the documentary, Freddie’s wife Rachael Woods opened up on the heartbreaking moment she found out about Freddie’s crash, as well as the tough moment she had to tell their four children.
“When I did see him, I walked in the room, and he was just in the bed, and he was bandaged up. Like his eyes, I’ve never seen someone so scared in their eyes,” Rachael tearfully recalled. “And he just stared at me, and I just think he was looking at me to know how bad he was.”
Admitting she “pulled herself together,” Rachael then went on to speak about the moment she had to tell their four children – and her heartbreaking plea to them.
“Before we got home, I did, I did call the kids, and I did say to them, ‘you’ve just got to be as strong as you’ve ever been. Your dad does look different at the moment. It’s gonna get better, but I don’t want you to look shocked and horrified, because that’s gonna knock him'”.
Rachael then spoke on how hard is was for her to do, adding: “Andy doesn’t know I’ve ever done that.”
In the documentary, the 47-year-old revealed how he’d be doing less TV going forward, and said Top Gear bosses treated him “like a piece of meat” in the lead up to his crash.
“I think that is the danger that TV falls into. And I found out the hard way eventually,” Freddie said speaking on the need to make everything on TV “bigger and better” than before. “It’s always more. Everybody wants more. Everybody wants that thing that nobody’s seen before. Everybody wants that bigger stunt. Everybody wants to dig that little bit deeper.
“Everybody wants an exclusive. Everybody wants, oh, let’s have that near miss, because then that’ll get viewers. Everything’s about viewers, always, always,” he continued.
“And I should have been clever on this, because I learned this in sport as well, with all the injuries and all the injections and all the times I got sent out on a cricket field and just treated like a piece of meat. That’s TV and sport. I think that’s where it’s quite similar. You’re just a commodity. You’re just a piece of meat.”
In a heartbreaking admission, the star revealed that his son was too terrified to be by his fathers side after suffering a number of serious facial injuries.
“You want to be there for the kids and you don’t want to miss stuff and fortunately I’ve got four of them,” Freddie said when speaking about being scared to step out of the house.
“I’ve spent all this time with a three-and-a-half year old. He wouldn’t come near me to begin with, I think it frightened him, my face,” he emotionally admitted about his youngest son Preston. “It frightened me. That was heartbreaking.”
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