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Jamie Foxx’s health has been mired in mystery for more than a year after an unspecified, debilitating illness led to his hospitalization in April 2023.
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The actor and comedian finally pulled back the (medical) curtain in his latest Netflix special “Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was …,” revealing that he experienced a stroke, after which he needed a nurse to bathe him and had to relearn how to walk.
The hour-long special, which premiered on Tuesday, combined the seriousness of the medical issues Foxx faced with the hilarity of the internet theories that followed. The comedian was brought to tears as he recalled how his sister, Deidra Dixon, advocated for his care and how his then-14-year-old daughter Anelise’s guitar playing acted as a “spiritual defibrillator.” He also rebuffed rumors that Sean “Diddy” Combs tried to kill him (“I left the parties early. I was out by 9,” he quipped) and that he was actually replaced by a clone. (“It ain’t enough clone juice in the world to clone me,” he said.)
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“If I can stay funny, I can stay alive,” Foxx repeats throughout the special.
During the show, Foxx recounted the same story he told a crowd during a trip to Phoenix in June. His medical emergency stemmed from a bad headache on April 11, 2023, he said. He asked a friend for aspirin, but before he could take the medication, he was “gone” for 20 days. “I don’t remember anything,” he said in Phoenix.
His first doctor simply gave him a cortisone shot, he said. But his second doctor, at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, told him he’d had a brain bleed that led to a stroke. He underwent a brain operation and later recovered at a rehabilitation facility in Chicago.
Foxx, whose starring role in the 2004 biographical film “Ray” won him an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for best actor, had wrapped up several successful film projects before his health scare. He played Slick Charles in the 2023 Netflix sci-fi film “They Cloned Tyrone,” returned as Electro in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in 2021, voiced Joe in the Pixar movie “Soul” in 2020, and starred opposite Michael B. Jordan in the 2019 drama “Just Mercy.”
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His daughter Corinne broke the news of his illness on Instagram on April 12, 2023, writing that her father had experienced a “medical complication” the day before. The actor had been rushed to a hospital in Atlanta, where he was filming the Netflix movie “Back in Action” with Cameron Diaz.
“Luckily, due to quick action and great care, he is already on his way to recovery,” Corinne continued in her statement. “We know how beloved he is and appreciate your prayers. The family asks for privacy during this time.”
But as weeks went by with scant details on his condition, rumors flew online that Foxx’s family was preparing for the worst. Corinne quickly shot down those reports.
“Sad to see how the media runs wild. My Dad has been out of the hospital for weeks, recuperating,” she wrote on Instagram on May 12, 2023.
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“What Had Happened Was” is one of Foxx’s first projects since his illness. Earlier this year, he and his daughter returned to helm “Beat Shazam” for the song-identifying game show’s seventh season.
He was also set to work with Corinne on the Fox game show “We Are Family,” where contestants try to guess which celebrities non-famous people are related to, but Anthony Anderson and Anderson’s mother ended up replacing them, although Foxx stayed on as one of the show’s executive producers.
The actor didn’t mention in “What Had Happened Was” that he’s facing a sexual assault and battery lawsuit filed in November 2023.
An anonymous woman alleged that after she and a friend took a picture with him at a New York rooftop lounge and bar in 2015, the seemingly drunk actor pulled her away to a back area, fondled her breasts and touched her vagina and anus. She alleged that a security guard walked away after seeing what was happening.
The lawsuit against Foxx, whose legal name is Eric Marlon Bishop, was submitted to New York County Supreme Court two days before the expiration of the state’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed people alleging they were sexually assaulted as adults to file lawsuits regardless of how long ago the incidents occurred.
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