Key Points
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Jamie Foxx is speaking about frustration he felt after having a stroke in 2023.
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The Oscar winner said he wondered why he was the one experiencing health problems.
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Foxx said he turned to comedy during his health crisis.
Jamie Foxx is speaking candidly about recovering from a stroke that nearly killed him in 2023.
“I was talking to him,” Foxx said, pointing upward, this week on Baby, This Is Keke Palmer. “This is me, bro. I put the smiles on people’s faces. Look at all these bad people out here. Why me?”
Foxx said he understood that those people belonged to someone else, and this was his time.
“I couldn’t make sense of it, and I remember — the parts I do remember, like the rehab part — was frustrating,” said Foxx, 58. “Cause I remember they said, ‘You got a second chance.’ I said, ‘f— the second chance. What was wrong with my first chance?'”
He noted that there had been some lighter moments throughout his recovery.
“They couldn’t do wellness checks on me,” Foxx said, “because I only had comedy to lean on. So I was joking all the time.”
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The star of movies including Ray, Collateral, and Horrible Bosses explained that when his medical team would attempt to measure his progress, he would break into an impression of someone else.
His daughter Corinne Foxx, who was also a guest on the podcast, reminded him that when he was admitted, he impersonated Denzel Washington.
“Not because he didn’t know who it was, but because he was making a joke,” she told Palmer.
After Jamie broke into the impression on the spot, Corrine noted, “And they don’t know: is he OK or not?'”
He explained, “But that was the only way that I could stay… that’s the only way that I could find myself,” he said. “Because here’s the truth of it: When this all transpired, I went back to meet the 60 nurses that kept me alive.”
He said that one of the nurses at the Atlanta hospital where he was being treated told him that “less than 3 percent of people who come in here with what you had walk out here. We usually put them in a box.”
He remembered her telling him that he was a “miracle.”
“It makes you want to go get it,” Foxx said.
The comedian and actor spoke candidly about his health scare in a 2024 Netflix comedy special, What Had Happened Was. He performed it several times to shoot the special, and he found it “an excruciating time to be able to open those wounds every single day for three nights,” Foxx told CBS Mornings’ Gayle King in a backstage video.
“It was excruciating because the worry is what gets you. We’ve got a great show in the room, but we don’t know what they may laugh or what they may not laugh at,” he said. “Any comedian will tell you that’s the thing, the worry is the thing. Usually, when you do a stand-up special, you go out for a year and a half and work every nook and cranny, then you tape it. You don’t just show up in Atlanta and turn the camera on.”
Watch his full conversation with Palmer above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
