Jamie Foxx Reveals He Suffered Brain Bleed & Stroke in Netflix Special: ‘I Don’t Remember 20 Days’

Jamie Foxx, 56, is opening up in his new Netflix special about the major health crisis he suffered in 2023.

The comedian just dropped “What Had Happened Was...” on the streamer, where he details the life-threatening medical emergency that threatened to end his career.

The Oscar winner explained, “April 11, I was having a bad headache, and I asked my boy for aspirin,” joking, “I realized quickly that when you’re in a medical emergency, your boys don’t know what the f**k to do.”

Before he could take the medication, he blacked out. He went on to reveal, “I don’t remember 20 days.” 

Foxx’s friend tried taking him to a doctor, who gave him a cortisone shot. Jamie insisted, “I don’t know if you can do Yelps for doctors, but that’s half a star.”

Thankfully, his sister Deidra Dixon was able to intervene shortly afterward.

“She says, ‘Get him in the car. That ain’t my brother right there,'” Foxx explained. “She drove around — she didn’t know anything about Piedmont Hospital [in Atlanta], but she had a hunch that some angels [were] in there.”

That’s when his sister learned Foxx was “having a brain bleed that has led to a stroke.” A doctor told Dixon, "If I don’t go in his head right now, we’re going to lose him.”

“My sister knelt down outside the operating room and prayed the whole time,” he said.

At another point he shared that doctors told Dixon, "We didn't find where it was coming from, but he is having a stroke.”

Foxx said of being unconscious, "Your life doesn’t flash before your face. It was kind of oddly peaceful," joking, “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. It was hot in that tunnel. Shit, am I going to the wrong place in this mother**ker? Because I looked at the end of the tunnel, and I thought I saw the Devil like, ‘C’mon.’ Or is that Puffy [Sean Combs]? I’m f**king around.”

Foxx said that when he was in the hospital, his vitals were too high. He credited his daughter Anelise, 14, with helping them go down. While he didn’t want the teen seeing him in that condition, she snuck in with her guitar and played for him.

“It was God in that guitar,” Foxx said, calling it a “miracle.” “That’s my spiritual defibrillator.”

Anelise even made an appearance during the special for an emotional duet with her dad.

“You had to make it because I always dreamed we would perform together on stage one day,” she said.

Doctors believed Jamie could make a full recovery, but warned his family it would be “the worst year of his life.”

Jamie confirmed. “That’s what it was.”

Deirda and his daughter Corinne helped protect his privacy during that vulnerable time.

Foxx choked up, saying, “They didn’t want you to see me like that. And I didn’t want you to see me like that. I want you to see me like this.”

After Foxx woke up, he struggled to understand why he was in a wheelchair, and that he had suffered a stroke.

"Twenty days I don’t remember, but on May 4 I woke up… and when I woke up, I found myself in a wheelchair,” he said. “I couldn’t walk, in a wheelchair, and I was like, 'Why the f**k am I in a wheelchair?' I’m just coming out of shit."

A friend warned him that he couldn’t walk, and Jamie thought it was "a horrible joke,” adding, “Jamie Foxx don’t get strokes.”

Jamie said in the moment, he told his friend,  "Stop this f**king prank."

He told the crowd that he wasn’t sure about having a nurse bathe him and then found out she had been bathing him for weeks.

“I couldn’t wipe my own ass,” Foxx said.

He went on, “I lost everything, but the only thing I could hold onto was my sense of humor,” Foxx said, insisting, “If I could stay funny, I could stay alive.” 

During the show, Foxx also brought up the conspiracy theories that were running rampant online during his recovery, saying, “Y’all mother**kers really thought I was a clone.”

He also made another joke about Combs, who is facing serious allegations, some of which are related to his infamous parties. The music mogul has denied any wrongdoing.

Foxx joked, “The internet said Puffy was trying to kill me, that’s what the internet was saying. I know what you thinking: ‘Diddy?’ Hell, no, I left them parties early.”

Referencing the seizure of baby oil allegedly used at the orgies as part of the Diddy investigation, Foxx went on, “I was out by 9. ‘Something don’t look right. It’s slippery in here.’"

Also during the special, the actor, who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles, performed a gospel song on the piano.