Jamie Foxx Thought Waking Up From Coma Was A Prank

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 17: Jamie Foxx attends the London photocall for "Back In Action" at Cheval Three Quays on January 17, 2025 in London, England.
(Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images)

Jamie Foxx believed that waking up from his coma was a prank. 

During a recent interview on the Graham Norton Show, the actor shared his first thoughts after waking up from his coma following his 2023 health scare. “I had a bad situation happen, but I’m back now,” he said to Norton. “When something bad happens you need people that really, really care about you and love you to get you through that.” 

He talked about suffering from a brain bleed that led to a stroke. He said that he woke up twenty days later with no memory of what happened and didn’t believe the kind of condition he was in. “I said, ‘What? Where is Ashton Kutcher? Am I being Punk’d? So when it settled in, I was like… I really gotta try to try to get back, you know, and the only way I did get back was kind of being funny. I said in my stand up, if I could stay funny, you know, I could stay alive,” he said. 

Foxx continued, “When they would come check on me. I was always telling jokes to the point to where they thought that something was wrong with me… I was never myself, I would always be somebody else. And for like days I was Denzel [Washington].”

During his comedy special, Jamie Foxx spoke about his health battle for the first time. He said that he was experiencing a headache and that he went to the doctor, who wanted to give him medication and send him home. However, it was his sister to pushed him to get a second opinion for a proper diagnosis. 

“He said, ‘He’s having a brain bleed that’s led to a stroke,’” he said during his stand-up. “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.” 

Foxx added, “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. I was in that tunnel though. It was hot in that tunnel. S***, am I goin’ to the wrong place in this motherf****r? Because I looked at the end of the tunnel and I thought I saw the devil-like, ‘Come on, n***a.”