‘We’re going to lose him’: Jamie Foxx moved to tears as he finally bares all about his brush with death in new Netflix special

Jamie Foxx‘s life-threatening medical condition was kept under wraps for over a year, but the actor has now chosen to share the devastating details of the health scare in his new, aptly titled Netflix special, Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was.

It didn’t take long before the actor burst into tears as he entered the stage of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, just a year and a half after nearly dying and consequentially becoming the focus of a number of online conspiracies. “You have no idea how good this feels. I’m back!” he remarked as A$AP Ferg’s “New Level” blasted through the speakers and the crowd chanted his name.

Seemingly fully recovered and in his signature good spirits, Foxx pulled himself together, exclaiming, “If I dance all night, don’t mind me. I’m happy to be alive!” Soon enough, though, the floodgates re-opened and the 56-year-old struggled to speak as he sat down to begin telling his story.

April 11, I was having a bad headache, and I asked my boy for an Aspirin. (…) Before I could get the Aspirin [snaps fingers] I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”

Foxx doesn’t recall the events that followed, but he was told that the first doctor he visited sent him home with nothing but a cortisone shot. It was his sister, Deidra Dixon, who noticed something was not right and pushed for him to be seen by someone else. They eventually wound up at Piedmont Hospital, just 400 yards (ca. 366 m) away from where the special was filmed in October. Deidra was told that her brother had suffered a brain hemorrhage that led to a stroke.

[The doctor] said (…) ‘If I don’t go in his head right now, we’re gonna lose him.’ So, what I was told is that, they take me in to operate on me and my sister knelt down outside the operating room and prayed the whole time.”

The actor then described the experience as “oddly peaceful” as he recalled seeing the tunnel, but not the light. As this was meant to be a comedy special, Foxx made sure to break the heavier moments up with a gag or two.

First, he joked that his sister had told the doctor he could “go in his head” but he wouldn’t find anything in there. Then Foxx teased that that tunnel had felt hot, making him worry that he was going the wrong way. “I looked at the end of the tunnel and I thought I saw the devil. Or was that Puffy [aka Puff Daddy aka Diddy]?” This obviously drew loud gasps and bursts of laughter from the audience. “I’m f—ing around, but if it was Puffy, he had a flaming bottle of Johnson… Not I’m just kidding,” he trailed off, referencing, of course, the “1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant” found in the disgraced music mogul’s Los Angeles and Miami homes during police raids back in March, just a little over a year after Foxx’s emergency.

At the time, little was known about the extent of his condition, because Foxx’s family worked hard to preserve his privacy. What was known was that the situation was serious and potentially deadly, generating heated speculation about what had become of the Oscar-winner. The internet naturally ran away with it, making up cloning theories and connecting it to the other man of the hour — Diddy.

[My sister and my daughter] held me down. ‘Nobody sees him!’ They cut it all off. They didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t want you to see me like that. I want you to see me like this.”

After blacking out for 20 days, Foxx finally regained consciousness in early May. Unable to walk, he was in denial that this could have happened to him, angrily refusing specialists’ help while in rehab in Chicago. In the Netflix special, the actor detailed how regaining his faith in God and holding on to his sense of humor finally led him to acceptance and, ultimately, recovery. “If I can stay funny, I can stay alive.”

In December 2023, Foxx made his first public appearance after suffering the stroke to receive the Vanguard Award at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema & Television: Honoring Black, Latino and AAPI Achievements ceremony.

Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was is now streaming on Netflix, along with Foxx’s most recent movie, and the last one he filmed before his medical emergency, the prophetically titled Back in Action.