It’s been nearly a year since Jamie Foxx was hospitalized with an undisclosed “medical complication.” And while the singer/actor has been mostly off the radar since then, on Sunday Foxx, 56, told the audience at the African American Film Critic’s Association Special Achievement Awards luncheon that he is finally ready to open up about the health scare that he’s previously described as a situation he wasn’t sure he was “gonna make it through.”
According to Variety, while accepting the AAFCA’s Producers Award the Oscar and Grammy-winner Foxx promised that he will finally open up about the mystery ailment, with his signature wit and on his schedule.
“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 told the audience. “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.” Foxx teased that the show would be called “What Had Happened Was” and that it will feature “all the things that happened, especially on our side of our community.”
The latter was reportedly a joke about the online rumors of phony post-hospitalization “Jamie Foxx” sightings. “I dove out of a car to save this Black woman’s purse,” he joked. “That ain’t no damn Jamie, that’s a clone.” That last one, by the way, was true, according to Variety.
Last July, Foxx posted an emotional video giving an update on his recovery after his April 2023 hospitalization. “I went through something that I thought I would never, ever go through. I know a lot of people were waiting or wanting to hear updates, but to be honest with you, I just didn’t want you to see me like that,” Foxx said. “I want you to see me laughing, having a good time partying, cracking a joke, doing a movie, television show. I didn’t want you to see me with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was gonna make it through.”
Foxx’s daughter, Corinne Foxx, announced on April 12 that her dad had been hospitalized for an undisclosed “medical complication” while filming the Netflix movie Back in Action in Atlanta; to date the actor has not provided any additional information about his illness or recovery.
In January, Foxx re-joined Cameron Diaz on the set of the film Back in Action and is getting ready to re-team with his daughter on Fox’s Beat Shazam game show.
“I’m so thankful. And I just get emotional. Because it was really… it’s beyond the scope. Cherish life,” Foxx said on Sunday. “I have some people in my life that really made sure I was here because it was dire straits,” Foxx said, then joking about his daughter thinks he’s a bit too thankful for some things these days. “I was drinking some water, like ‘Wow, you taste this water? It’s so wet. This is the wettest water’ [and she replied,] ‘Dad, you’ve gotta chill out.’”
Watch Foxx’s new Beat Shazam promo below.
