Jamie Foxx Read Wild Conspiracies About Himself While Hospitalized

Jamie Foxx is turning trauma into punchlines—and doing it like only he can.

The actor and comedian opened up during The Hollywood Reporter’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable about the stroke that nearly ended his life in April 2023. It happened while filming his Netflix movie Back in Action in Atlanta, and it was no joke—Foxx was in a coma for 20 days after a brain bleed.

But true to form, Foxx found the funny, even in the scariest moments.

“I was doing so many jokes in the hospital. That’s the only way I could get through it,” he told THR. “I’m a comic, so even when I was heavily sedated, and they gave me OxyContin, Dilantin and morphine at the same time… it was, ‘This is for your pain, and this is so you don’t remember it.’”

Sounds wild? It gets weirder.

Foxx admitted he snuck a phone into his hospital room to see what the world was saying about him—and what he found was straight out of a sci-fi comedy. “I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that I had a stroke. I’m in f-----g perfect shape,” he said.

Then came the online rumors.

He laughed as he recalled seeing wild theories: “‘Puffy tried to kill me.’ No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me.” But the one that really blew his mind? Someone said he was replaced by a clone.

“That made me flip,” Foxx said. “I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, 'These b-----a-- m-----f-----s are trying to clone me.' And then I saw me walk into my room, but I’m white, so I see the white me.”

Wait—what?

Foxx imagined the conspiracy went even deeper. “The next morning, I said, ‘I know what’s up, you’re trying to clone me and make me white so I’ll sell better overseas.’”

Even the psychiatrist checking on him had to double-take. “Are you all right?” they asked. Foxx fired back, “‘Am I all right or am I all white? I saw you trying to get the white m------f------ Jamie Foxx and it ain’t going to happen.’”

At that point, the doctor made the only logical call: lower the meds.

Comedian Roy Wood Jr., also at the roundtable, couldn’t believe it. “Wait, you read your conspiracy theory and you said, ‘Yes?’” he asked.

Foxx replied, “Bro, I was on another planet.”

Foxx has since told more of his story in his 2024 Netflix special, Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was..., where he described the early warning signs—like a killer headache—and how his sister rushed him to the hospital. Doctors told him they had to operate immediately or he’d die.

“Your life doesn’t flash before your face. It was kind of oddly peaceful,” he recalled about being unconscious. “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. I was in that tunnel, though.”

Now, back in action and back to laughing, Foxx is using humor not just to heal, but to remind us all—sometimes, comedy really is the best medicine.