'I accepted I was going to die': Neighbours actress Zima Anderson speaks about horror fall during Celebrity SAS
A TV actress has said she “accepted” she was going to die when she suffered a serious injury while taking part in a popular reality TV show.
Former Neighbours star Zima Anderson has spoken out about her experience of taking part in SAS Australia: Who Dares Wins, which left her unable to walk for four days.
The 26 -year-old Australian soap star was jumping from a high platform into the ocean when she slipped and accidentally fell onto a concrete slab. Her injury was severe, but the actress has now re-called the accident, which happened last year, and has said she is lucky she wasn’t killed or left paralysed for life.
Scenes which aired on the show showed her being carried out on a stretcher, and it was later found she had a fractured right elbow and wrist.
“I remember, I almost died. I dead a** fell eight metres, onto straight concrete – just my body – and didn’t die,” she told The Disruption Ent podcast. She continued: “It was a mistake that wasn’t meant to be made and I got intiuition to not do [it]. It was one of the things I thought I got a message to not do it and I didn’t follow my intuition.”
“I was meant to land in the water in the ocean. If I had landed in the water, I would have been paraplegic or dead easily. It took me four days to walk again, the shock in my body. I was in some army hospital and they kept doing scans and stuff because it didn’t make sense,” she explained. “I thought I broke my spine or broke my legs and I remember every single aspect and every single moment, and in all honesty, I just accepted I was going to die.”
It was last year that the star took part in what is the latest series of SAS: Who Dares Wins Australia, which is based on the British show of the same name that airs on Channel 4. The series sees famous faces take place in a training course that aims to replicate a number of elements of the actual special forces program.
It was confirmed earlier in this year that broadcaster Seven Network has decided the series will not return this year, which had aired four celebrity series and one civilian. It is not yet known whether it will return in future.
Anderson starred on the show alongside fellow Neighbours alumni Craig McLachlan, who played Henry Ramsay, and Tim Robards, who played Pierce Greyson, but then had to withdraw on medical grounds in the seventh episode.
The actress appeared as Roxy Willis for three years on Neighbours between 2019 and 2022, later returning for a prolonged guest stint just months after her exit. Her character was troublesome at first, but then settled down with Kyle Canning (Chris Milligan) and the pair had IVF treatment to conceive their first child. Upon her brief return, the character was heavily pregnant.