Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx’s new special is more prayer than blame game

It began as a bad headache that Jamie Foxx thought could be dealt with a dose of aspirin. All would be well, he thought. But before he could get his hands on that aspirin, Foxx was out cold. He woke up nearly 3 weeks later. “I don’t remember 20 days,” he says in his new Netflix special, Jamie Fox: What Had Happened Was, which dropped on the platform on December 10.

Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was...

The special was shot in Atlanta, the city that Foxx repeatedly says during the hour, “saved” his life. After a doctor sent him home with a cortisone shot, Foxx’s sister Deidra Dixon was not convinced that he was okay and drove him to Piedmont Hospital, where the family was then told that he’d had a bleed in the brain that led to a stroke.

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Foxx reckons that he’s back and in great shape thanks to a lot of prayers from various quarters, which he is immensely thankful to. The actor-comedian-musician’s narration of his journey of recovery has the odd joke here and there, as he talks about going from being in a wheelchair and unable to walk, with an involuntary shaking of the head to all well, like nothing ever happened to him. As long as he stays funny, he will stay alive, was his mantra and that worked wonders for him.

Before the special dropped, it was reported that Foxx’s revelation about what went down would have him pinning the blame on rapper P Diddy. He doesn’t take that road, but slips in a joke about seeing the Devil, or was it Diddy, when he “saw the tunnel”.

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For the most part, Foxx talks about how his family reacted to his stroke, and the role his youngest daughter played in his recovery. It’s also about him reflecting on his equation with God, a bond that’s only gotten stronger since April 2023.