Sometimes, the only way through the pain is to laugh. That’s exactly what Jamie Foxx leaned on during one of the darkest chapters of his life.
In a recent conversation for “The Hollywood Reporter’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable”, the Oscar-winning actor and comedian opened up about how humor became a lifeline as he recovered from a near-fatal stroke caused by a brain bleed in 2023.
“I was doing so many jokes in the hospital. That’s the only way I could get through it. I’m a comic,” Foxx told the roundtable of fellow comedians.
Foxx recalled being heavily sedated during that time.
“Bro, I was on another planet,” he said. “They gave me OxyContin, Dilantin and morphine at the same time … it was, ‘This is for your pain, and this is so you don’t remember it.’”
At one point, the medication had him so out of it that even online conspiracy theories started to feel real.
“This isn’t funny, but I snuck in my phone because I didn’t know what the outside world was saying, and I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that I had a stroke. I’m in fucking perfect shape,” he admitted. “ [I see things like,] ‘Puffy tried to kill me.’ No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me.”
“[But] when they said I was a clone, that made me flip. I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, “These bi—a– motherf—ers are trying to clone me.” And then I saw me walk into my room, but I’m white, so I see the white me. The next morning, I said, “I know what’s up, you’re trying to clone me and make me white so I’ll sell better overseas,” he recalled. “The psychiatrist says, ‘Are you all right?’ And I say, ‘Am I all right or am I all white? I saw you trying to get the white m———g Jamie Foxx and it ain’t going to happen.’”
Following that interaction, Foxx remembers the doctor calmly suggesting they lower his medication dosages. While the multi-hyphenate star remembers these comedic moments, Foxx described recovering from the stroke as the worst year of his life.
“You’re lookin’ at a man who is thankful,” he said as previously reported by theGrio. “It’s been an unexpected dark journey, but I can see the light… I’m thankful to everyone [who] reached out and sent well wishes and prayers… I have a lot of people to thank… u just don’t know how much it meant… I will be thanking all of you personally… and if you didn’t know… GOD IS GOOD… all day, every day.”
