Jamie Foxx fans might need a tissue for this special and not just to wipe away tears from laughing so hard.
In his new Netflix special What Had Happened Was, the Academy Award winner finally explains the "medical emergency" that landed him in the hospital.
The backstory: In April 2023, while filming the movie Back In Action in Atlanta, Foxx collapsed and then spent 20 days in the hospital. "I went to hell and back," he explained in a heartfelt Instagram video after being released.
But Foxx, his family and associates were mum on the details because he "didn't want his fans to see him like that."
'Atlanta saved my life, but the Internet tried to kill me'
What happened: In the Netflix special, Foxx says that on April 11, 2023, he had a "bad headache," and then he was "out" and doesn't remember anything about the next 20 days. He says it was his sister who took him to Piedmont Hospital, where a doctor told her Foxx had a "brain bleed that led to a stroke" and that "If I don't go into his head, we're gonna lose him."
"You can go in his head but you ain't gonna find nothin'," Foxx jokes, quoting his sister's response.
Foxx weaves in some hilarious jokes and asides throughout the telling of his trauma. While he's known for movies such as Ray, Collateral and Django Unchained, his roots are in stand up and sketch comedy.
"I saw the tunnel. I didn't see the light," he says. Then he deadpans, "I thought I saw the devil. Or was it Puffy?" A reference to Sean "Diddy" Combs. The internet was full of rumors that Foxx would blame Combs for his hospitalization. But Foxx does give the jailed music mogul a good ribbing.
Throughout the special, Foxx repeatedly gets choked up thinking about the impact his hospitalization had on his family and friends.
Denial, gratitude, faith, music, impressions and an Internet takedown
Foxx says that on May 4, he woke up in a wheelchair and couldn't walk. When a friend told him he'd suffered a stroke, Foxx balked, "That's old man stuff."
He went to Chicago for rehab, where he says he had bouts of star power arrogance. His therapist was having none of it. "That stroke doesn't give a f*** about Jamie Foxx," she told him, "There are people who won't get out of here."
Some of the most poignant moments in the special come when Foxx talks about his family and everything they did to protect and care for him. He says it was his then-14 year old daughter Anelise who kept his vital signs down when she came to the hospital and played guitar for him. He calls her playing "my spiritual defibrillator." She joins Foxx on stage for a duet. It's quite a moment.
The Internet was rampant with speculation about what happened to Foxx while he was in the hospital, some of it pretty absurd. Foxx goes to town on people who claimed he was "cloned."
Foxx talks a lot about his faith and reflects that he thinks the stroke may have been a sign that he wasn't taking God and his blessings seriously enough. Sitting at the piano, he leads the audience in a singalong with the saying, "God is good. All the time."
Wanda, Mike Tyson, Ray Charles and Django. The audience goes wild when Foxx brings back some of his legendary characters and impersonations. "It's amazing how we're all connected," he tells them. More than once, the comedian thanks Atlanta. It's where he first did stand up and it's a place he now says kept him alive.
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