Jamie Foxx Details Near-Death Experience: 'Thought I Saw the Devil'

Jamie Foxx truly tells it all in his new standup special for Netflix, aptly titled What Had Happened Was.

The 69-minute special, now available, wastes no time in setting Foxx up for the long-teased reveal at the core of its emotional centerpiece, i.e. the near-death experience the Oscar-winning actor and beloved comedian (not to mention Grammy-winning singer) survived back in 2023. Fittingly, Foxx opted to film his new special in Atlanta, the home of the Piedmont hospital he credits with helping to save his life.

“The internet tried to kill me though,” he jokes early into the special, which sees Foxx oscillating between gallows humor and moments of genuine self-reflection in the face of nearly losing everything. “They said I was paralyzed.”

Later, Foxx elaborated on this side of the social media reactions spurred by coverage of his 2023 medical emergency, focusing on those who opted to conspiratorially bring Diddy into the mix. In September of this year, Diddy was arrested in New York and later formally accused of racketeering and trafficking.

“The internet said that Puffy tried to kill me. … I know what you’re thinking. Did he?” Foxx joked. “Hell naw, n***a. I left them parties early. I was out about nine. Something don’t look right. It’s slippery in here.”

On a more serious note, Foxx’s special sees him detailing what he remembers of the fateful April 11th in question, which began as a “bad headache” but quickly progressed into him waking up confused, having unknowingly lost 20 days of his life in the process. While the first doctor Foxx saw tried to simply give him a shot and send him on his way, Foxx credited his sister for pushing forward, not trusting that all was well with her brother. Finally, a “cool doctor with a Lakers jersey” at Piedmont gave them a proper diagnosis.

“He said, ‘He’s having a brain bleed that’s led to a stroke,’” Foxx told the crowd in one particularly emotional moment in What Had Happened Was. “Damn. Me. Me, man. Me. Here’s the thing, when you dream about what you wanna be in life, you don’t dream tragedy. You dream everything is good. … You don’t dream that something could go wrong, but when something does go wrong, you need a sister, four-foot-eleven, full of nothing but love.”

Later, though I will briefly digress here to point out that a standup comedy special is best enjoyed by simply watching it yourself and not reading aggregations-focused news hits on it, Foxx got one of the biggest laughs of the night by again mentioning Diddy, this time in connection with a description of how it felt to be unconscious for 20 days.

“I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light” Foxx said. “I was in that tunnel though. It was hot in that tunnel. Shit, am I goin’ to the wrong place in this motherfucker? Because I looked at the end of the tunnel and I thought I saw the devil like, ‘Come on, n***a.’ Or is that Puffy? I’m fucking around. But if it was Puffy he had, like, a flaming bottle of Johnson…Naw, I’m just kidding.”

What Had Happened Was is already poised for potential awards season glory, as it was recently revealed among the nominations for the 2025 Golden Globes. The Hamish Hamilton-directed special is nominated for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television alongside projects from Nikki Glaser, Seth Meyers, Adam Sandler, Ali Wong, and Ramy Youssef.