Yahoo Lifestyle Jamie Foxx Reveals He Had a Stroke in Emotional Netflix Special What Had Happened Was…
Jamie Foxx is breaking his silence.
Nearly two years after a very public health scare, the Oscar- and Grammy Award winner is revealing that he suffered a debilitating stroke that almost took his life.
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“You don’t know how good this feels,” he says at the top of his Netflix special, What Had Happened Was…, out Tuesday. “You have no idea, Atlanta. You all saved my life, just 400 yards away from here, at Piedmont Hospital. They put me back together again.”
What follows is a retelling of events that led to a discouraging diagnosis.
“April 11, I was having a bad headache, and I asked my boy for an aspirin,” Fox recalls. “And I realized quickly that, when you’re in a medical emergency, your boys don’t know what the f—k to do…. Before I could get the aspirin,” he snaps his fingers, “I went out. I don’t remember 20 days. What they told me was that they took me to the first doctor, and that doctor just gave me a cortisone shot and sent me home. Now, I don’t know if you can do Yelps for doctors, man, but that’s half a star, n—a.”
His sister, however, remained convinced that he was in the throes of a serious medical episode: “Four-foot-eleven, and full of nothing but pure love, she said, ‘Something’s wrong with my brother.’ She came over to see me, and they told me I was lethargic. She says, ‘Get him in the car. That ain’t my brother right there.'”
She drove him to Piedmont Hospital, where the doctors told her that he was “having a brain bleed that has led to a stroke.” He underwent a life-saving procedure, then woke up on May 4. He was confined to a wheelchair and had no idea why.
What followed was the worst year of his life. His ego, he says, nearly cost him his recovery.
“I lost everything,” Foxx says, and “the only thing I could hold onto was my sense of humor.” He told himself, “If I could stay funny, I could stay alive.”
When Foxx was first hospitalized in the spring of 2023, his family chose not to disclose the nature of his health complications. Three months later, he made his first official statement on Instagram that sought to debunk rumors that he was paralyzed or blind.
“I went to hell and back and my road to recovery had some potholes as well,” Foxx said at the time. “But I’m coming back and I’m able to work.” He also explained why fans hadn’t heard from him since his initial hospitalization, adding, “I know a lot of people were waiting or wanting to hear updates, but to be honest with you, I just don’t want you to see me like that…. I want you to see me laughing, having a good time, partying, cracking a joke, doing a movie, television show. I didn’t want you to see me with with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was gonna make it through.”
Last December, he made a surprise appearance at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema & Television Honoring Black, Latino & AAPI Achievements, where he accepted the Vanguard Award and was visibly emotional as he recounted the then-mysterious illness that left him temporarily immobile.
“I’ve been through some things,” he said. “It’s crazy. I couldn’t do that six months ago. I couldn’t actually walk…. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on my worst enemy because it’s tough when you almost— when it’s almost over, when you see the tunnel. I saw the tunnel, I didn’t see the light.”
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