‘Pawn Stars’: Chumlee Sat Down for Podcast Interview Just Before Hospitalization

Monday night, Austin Russell, better known as Chumlee, was admitted to a Las Vegas hospital for severe abdominal pain and breathing problems. However, the Pawn Stars star just recently appeared on a podcast for The Las Vegas Review. At one point, he’s asked by host John Katsilometes about his thoughts on the success he’s seen over the past 11 years in reality TV.

Chumlee, never one to mince words, readily admitted he was still the “same type of guy.”

“Success shouldn’t change you,” he continued. “Any more than you’re normally, naturally gonna change and evolve as a person, which I think everyone does. But, if you let success change you, you’re not being true to yourself. I just stay true to myself, and if I make myself happy, along the way, I’m sure plenty of other people will be happy.”

On Monday, Chumlee shared a photo of himself in his hospital bed to his Instagram, as well as joked in one of his stories that he “probably got [the] coronavirus.”

“Rick made me come, I didn’t want to go,” Chumlee also said, according to The Blast. “I was at work when it happened. Trust me, I did not want to be here.” He then later assured fans that all “tests are good” so far, but is still waiting on one more. As far as the abdominal pain, Chumlee suggested that he might be constipated.

“I think it looks like I just need to poop,” he said.

Though he’s always been open about his struggles with weight in the past, Chumlee’s hospitalization comes after he’d lost over 100 pounds in early 2018 thanks to gastric sleeve surgery.

“I’ve been down, I’ve been up, I’ve been down, I’ve been up. So, when you need a little help to stay down, this is where you come,” Chumlee said in a video prior to going under the knife. “I’ve already lost 38 lbs on my pre-op diet. They recommend you do it for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been doing it for about five or six weeks now. So that’s going to make my goal to get to 200 lbs a lot better, a lot easier.”