Jamie Foxx always seems to have jokes, but even he runs into a rut every now and then.
“I had a special deal for a long time, but I had nothing to talk about,” Foxx recalled to fellow comics Hasan Minhaj, Roy Wood Jr., Seth Meyers, Chelsea Handler, and Sarah Silverman for The Hollywood Reporter‘s Stand-Up Emmy Roundtable. “What was I going to talk about? I was rich. I was behind my gates.”
Even an encounter with another stand-up legend couldn’t shake his worry. Foxx shared that during a visit to Eddie Murphy’s house, his Dreamgirls costar was dealing with the same situation.
When Murphy revealed he also wanted to get back to his stand-up roots around the time he was making Coming 2 America, Foxx hit him with the same rude awakening.
Paramount
Danny Glover, Eddie Murphy, and Jamie Foxx in ‘Dreamgirls’
“This ain’t funny. Your house is too nice,” the Back in Action star remembered telling Murphy. “[His house] had a scent. You know, the s— that pumps through the house [like a hotel]. I said, ‘What is that smell?’ He said, ‘It’s pomegranate.’ I said, ‘The fact that you know that s— lets me know that you ain’t funny, bro.'”
The problem was their lives were “too perfect,” Foxx lamented. The jokes don’t hit the same when everything seems too good to be true.
Around that time, Foxx was hit with a health crisis in April 2023. While fans were left with various conspiracy theories about what led to his medical emergency, Foxx eventually revealed that he suffered a brain bleed which turned into a stroke, and left him hospitalized for over a month.
The entertainer opened up about his health scare during his Netflix standup special What Had Happened Was, which began streaming in December.
The Best Actor Oscar winner got candid about the medical scare in the special, telling his audience that “we still don’t know exactly what happened to me. All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer because I needed it.”
Foxx explained that he still doesn’t remember 20 days during his sickness and credited his family for their quick thinking that ended up saving his life.
Parrish Lewis/Netflix
Jamie Foxx performs stand up for his Netflix special ‘What Had Happened Was’ at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta
“On May 4th I woke up,” he recalled. “And when I woke up, I found myself in a wheelchair. I couldn’t walk. In a wheelchair. And I was like, ‘What the f—, why am I in a wheelchair?'”
He turned to his friend, and a member of his management team, Dave Brown for answers. “He said, ‘Foxx, you had a stroke,'” the actor recounted. Thanks to therapy and physical rehab, Foxx has come a long way since then.
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While the experience gave Foxx plenty of material for his return to stand-up, it’s not one that he’s looking to repeat.
“This stroke happened, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a platform.’ But I don’t want to have to have another stroke, even though we have [a deal for] another hour,” Foxx joked during the roundtable.
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