Kelsey Grammer Opens Up About Near-Death Heart Attack

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT sat down today with Kelsey Grammer, in a new interview to air Thursday, July 24th.

For the first time on-camera, the veteran star shared his dramatic health update almost two months after his reported mild heart attack. "We originally said it was just a mild heart attack, and it actually wasn't very mild," he reveals. "They had to blast me twice and get me started all over again."

In the last weekend of May, Kelsey suffered the heart attack after paddleboarding with his wife Camille near their home off Hawaii's Kona coast. He was flown to a hospital in Honolulu and released several days later.

He tells ET about the near-death experience, "[My heart] stopped, and Camille was patting my head and she said, 'That's when you looked up at me and said, 'I'm going now.' And then off I went. And then she said, 'I'm going to need to zap him.'"

"It felt like somebody was actually trying to tear my chest apart with the jaws of life," explains Kelsey, adding, "As I lay there dying, I said, 'Please, I cannot do this. I don't want to see anything; I don't want to see any light; I don't want to have any little adventures that make me want to get out of this life. I need to finish this one.'"

Kelsey says he's "doing fine" now, and taking it slow in terms of exercising, "I'm playing a lot of Wii!"

Kelsey stars in the new political comedy, "Swing Vote," in theaters August 1st.