Jamie Foxx Read Conspiracies About Himself While Hospitalized for Stroke. One in Particular Made Him ‘Flip’
Jamie Foxx is learning to laugh about being hospitalized for a stroke that nearly claimed his life in April 2023. Speaking with fellow comedians for The Hollywood Reporter’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable, Foxx, 57, joked about spending time in the hospital for a brain bleed that led to a stroke, which he suffered while filming his Netflix movie Back in Action in Atlanta. The stroke left Foxx in a coma for about 20 days.
“I was doing so many jokes in the hospital. That’s the only way I could get through it,” he told THR. “I’m a comic, so even when I was heavily sedated, and 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.'”
The Ray star then joked that he started to believe some of the conspiracy theories that he read about himself during his hospital stay.
“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 f—–g perfect shape,” Foxx said.
He told the roundtable he saw rumors like “‘Puffy tried to kill me,'” saying, “No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me.” But when he saw a rumor that he was “a clone,” Foxx said, “that made me flip.”
“I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, ‘These b—–a– m—–f—–s are trying to clone me,'” he told the roundtable. “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.'”
When a psychiatrist asked him, “Are you all right?” Foxx said he replied, “‘Am I all right or am I all white? I saw you trying to get the white m——f—— Jamie Foxx and it ain’t going to happen.'”
After that, Foxx said, the doctor suggested lowering his medicine dosage.
Roy Wood Jr., also a roundtable participant, was shocked at Foxx’s story. “Wait, you read your conspiracy theory and you said, ‘Yes?’” he asked.
Foxx told him, “Bro, I was on another planet.”
The comedian opened up about his near-fatal stroke in his 2024 Netflix special Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was…, explaining that his symptoms began with a bad headache, but his sister noticed something was wrong with him and drove him to the hospital. There, doctors said they needed to operate on him immediately or he would die.
“Your life doesn’t flash before your face. It was kind of oddly peaceful,” Foxx said of being unconscious during his medical emergency, adding, “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. I was in that tunnel, though.”
