Jamie Foxx is stepping back into the spotlight after his health scare, this time through humor. The Oscar-winning actor and comedian recently opened up to Gayle King on CBS Mornings about his experience revisiting those vulnerable moments for his new Netflix comedy special, “What Had Happened Was.”
“It was an excruciating time to be able to open those wounds every single day for three nights,” Foxx told King in a backstage video shared on Instagram. Foxx was celebrating the final night of a three-date run in Atlanta, where the special was taped. “The worry is what gets you,” Foxx explained. “We’ve got a great show in the room, but we don’t know what they may laugh at or what they may not laugh at. Any comedian will tell you that’s the thing—the worry is the thing. Usually, when you do a stand-up special, you go out for a year and a half and work every nook and cranny, then you tape it. You don’t just show up in Atlanta and turn the camera on.”
Foxx was hospitalized in April 2023 for what his daughter Corinne described as a “medical complication.” After staying out of the public eye for over a month, he broke his silence in May, posting a simple message on Instagram expressing his gratitude for all the love and support he received from fans.
Although celebrity friends like Martin Lawrence and Kevin Hart gave updates about his condition, Foxx himself remained largely private. He revealed in September 2024 that this special was his way of sharing his journey. King, who attended the show, praised it, saying she’d “never seen a show where we were laughing and crying at the same time.”
In the conversation, Foxx vowed that he would never go through an ordeal like this again, promising that his next set of jokes would be light-hearted: “My next jokes will start out, ‘knock, knock.’ I’ll do an hour and a half of ‘knock, knock’ jokes.” He ended the conversation with a toast to brighter days ahead: “Let’s sit back, watch it, and build toward a newer, brighter, and healthier future.”
Foxx began speaking publicly about his health ordeal in July 2023, sharing that he had “gone to hell and back” but kept things private because he “didn’t want [fans] to see me with tubes running out of me.” In December, he recounted how, just six months earlier, he couldn’t walk and joked that he “saw the tunnel” but didn’t see the light. He shared that the ordeal began with a bad headache, leading him to ask a friend for an Advil, and next thing he knew, he was unconscious for 20 days.
Foxx is set to make his return to film on January 17, 2024, starring alongside Cameron Diaz in Netflix’s “Back in Action,” a project that marks Diaz’s return to acting after retiring in 2018. Details about Foxx’s Netflix comedy special are yet to be released, but it promises a deeply personal and uniquely humorous perspective on a challenging chapter of his life.
