Jamie Foxx Returns From A Stroke With Humility And Genius

"What Had Happened" is his epic return to the stage

Foxx is back

Jamie Foxx’s incredible new Netflix special “What Had Happened Was” is a Television Event that takes us through the story of Foxx’s return from a medical nightmare. He had a stroke. One minute he was feeling bad, the next he was waking up with no memory of the prior 20 days. He had to re-learn how to walk. On Instagram he wrote, “I went to hell and back and my road to recovery had some potholes as well.” To get through this long road, he needed to find a deep level of humility. He talks about waking up after the stroke and being too arrogant to accept reality. He was like “I can’t have had a stroke, I’m Jamie Foxx.” He had to learn that in the hospital we’re all the same. And he remembered the life-giving power of laughter saying, “If I could laugh, I could stay alive.”

The special walks us through Foxx making it through a long, wild hospital/rehab process. It recalls Richard Pryor talking about being in the hospital in Live On the Sunset Strip (1982) and Martin Lawrence talking about surviving the hospital in Runteldat (2002). The tan leather outfit that Foxx wears is a callback to the tan leather outfit Lawrence wore in Runteldat. “That's why he wore that tan outfit,” said Chris Spencer, a veteran comic who produced the show. “It was an homage to Martin. Because Martin almost died and went through what he went through. The color he picked out was like, you know what, let's show Martin some love.”

Martin Lawrence in Runteldat

Foxx’s special also reminds me of Chris Rock’s Tamborine (2018) where he talked about getting divorced and for a long portion of the show it’s not funny, but it’s not supposed to be, but it’s always compelling as hell. It can be so powerful when comedians get really honest, and really real, and stop, for a minute, being funny and get serious about something in their life. I think, too, of Tig Notaro’s legendary set about having cancer. In Foxx’s special we get him almost dying and regrowing and crying about the whole thing. It’s not the funniest thing Foxx has ever done but it’s definitely one of the most compelling.

The special is also about the women who got Foxx through this nightmare. There’s three main characters I can see in my mind’s eye even though Foxx never really described them. He just made me see them. There’s his sister, “4-foot-11 and full of nothin but love,” and his tough love nurse, “I’m Holly, motherfucker,” and his sweet youngest daughter who played guitar for him on nights he was really out of it in the hospital. She plays guitar for him in the middle of the show and it’s a tear-jerker.

It's crazy to me that Foxx never rehearsed this show in front of an audience. Typically, before recording a big network special a comic does hundreds of small club dates, honing the material. Foxx didn’t want to do that partly to keep everything under wraps. He wasn’t returning from a normal sabbatical. He was coming back from a nightmare and people were dying to see him and they would definitely be dying to talk about having seen him which could spoil the show. So he put a stage in his house and practiced there in front of his crew, including veteran comic Chris Spencer who said those private rehearsals were teary. “Every day we cried,” he said. “I watched him cry and I cried. We did camera tests and I cried. It was just like, so emotional. When I saw him finally after we wept like Mary and Jesus.”

Spencer said Foxx recorded the special in Atlanta over three nights. After they saw all the raw footage, Netflix and Foxx’s team opted to cut out 45 minutes of jokes that were strong but did not work toward building the overall narrative of Foxx dealing with having a stroke. They leaned into the story more than the funny.

There were some jokes about Diddy that got cut, but not much. Foxx takes a couple of quick jabs at him during the set, but at no point in the material did he overtly and definitively say that Diddy did this to him. There was an internet rumor that Foxx would allege that but that was just a rumor.

If you’re expecting a comedy show it isn’t really that but it wasn’t really meant to be that. It’s more like one of those “A Night With…” where the entertainer comes out and gives you a medley of talents. Foxx tells some funny stories, tells some dramatic stories, does some impressions, does some dances, plays the piano, and sings, too. He runs through a gamut of talents and touches almost every emotional button we have. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be on the edge of your seat throughout the whole wild show. Especially when Foxx sings about no more white women.