Jamie Foxx, who nearly died last year at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, returned to the city in October to tape a Netflix comedy special to talk in depth for the first time about his medical issues. The special came out on Netflix on Tuesday.
Foxx said he had a brain bleed that led to a stroke. It was “touch and go” for a period when the doctors weren’t sure Foxx would recuperate, he said.
“You all saved my life just 400 yards from here at Piedmont Hospital,” he told the audience at the 650-seat Alliance Theatre. “They put me back together again. God be the glory!” (Piedmont Hospital is about 1.3 miles from the Alliance.)
“Atlanta saved my life,” he added. “The internet tried to kill me though. They said I was paralyzed. But look at me now!”
Foxx taped three one-man shows in early October.
Foxx, now 56, was shooting a film called “Back in Action” with Cameron Diaz in Atlanta in April, 2023 when he got sick and ended up hospitalized for more than two weeks. At the time, the family did not reveal his medical problems, though TMZ reported he ended up in a rehab center in Chicago that treats patients with strokes.
He has since talked about his medical emergency in different ways over the past year but not in any detail until this special. “Everybody wants to know what happened, and I’m going to tell you what happened. But I’ve gotta do it in my way,” Foxx said in July, as reported by Variety. “I’m gonna do it in a funny way. We’re gonna be on the stage. We’re gonna get back to the standup sort of roots.”
During the special, he said while at Piedmont, “They said at one point, the first 15 days, they thought they were going to lose me because my vitals were out of control. There was a 13- or 14-day period where they said, ‘We’ve gotta keep him calm and we’ve given him every medication that they could. It’s not working. We gotta keep him calm because his vitals are so high we’re going to lose him.’”
But Foxx said “a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14. I didn’t want her to see me like that, but she snuck into my hospital room with her guitar and she said, ‘I know what my daddy needs. … That’s my daddy.’”
He was referencing his daughter, Anelise, who began playing her guitar.
“They said when she was playing, my vitals went down,” Foxx said. “The nurses at the nurses station were baffled. Like, ‘Wow, what did they give him?’ They rushed into the room and she said, ‘Ssh. … I got him.’ … Do you know what I found out? That God was in that guitar. That’s my spiritual defibrillator.”
Anelise then came on stage during the special with her guitar and performed after the two shared a tearful hug.
“Anelise, thank you so much for stepping up when all was lost,” he said.
“You had to make it because I always dreamed that we’d perform together on stage one day,” Anelise said.
Foxx then rapped and sang about his medical emergency while she played her guitar.
He sang: “God don’t take me. My oldest daughter’s getting married. Please let me walk her down the aisle.”
Foxx was referencing his 30-year-old daughter, Corinne, who got married to Joe Hooten in September. He was able to walk her down the aisle.
Foxx gave special invitations to his Piedmont Hospital care team to attend his taping, but they didn’t know exactly what he was going to do.
“You didn’t know what to expect,” said John Manasso, a spokesman for Piedmont who was there.
When they saw what he was doing, Manasso said Tuesday, “It was amazing. It was fantastic. He went into a whole lot of details I didn’t know about. The enormity of the care team and what it took to bring him back. … You don’t see gratitude expressed like that very often.”
AJC staff reporter Ariel Hart contributed to this story.
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