Jamie Foxx is back with a new comedy special, Take Care of Yourself, and revealed more hilarious details about his recovery from a stroke. While fans joked that his film They Cloned Tyrone was a hint about his fate, he believed he saw proof of the unmelanated mayhem firsthand. “They trying to clone me in here,” Foxx recalled thinking in rehab.
Comedians are experts in laughing at their pain and Jamie Foxx turned a near fatal incident into a masterclass. In an interview with Big Boy, he discussed trying to make sense of what happened to him after he was hospitalized with a brain bleed in 2023. Much like internet instigators who couldn’t imagine the action star as a stroke survivor, he bought into conspiracies about his condition and even hallucinated proof.
“The clone thing was crazy,” Foxx said, sharing he secretly read news about himself despite his family and medical team keeping him “cut off” from the outside world for six months.
“When it came to me trying to figure out what really happened to me, I snuck my phone to see what people were saying. And when I read the clone thing, that made sense to me. I said, ‘Oh, I ain’t had no stroke. They trying to clone me in here,’” he said.
“They done they done shot me up. So I’m in there high thinking like, ‘Yeah, trying to clone me.’ Then I saw me walk in. I thought I saw me walk into my room. I see me, but I’m white,” Foxx continued.
While the recovering and heavily medicated In Living Color veteran reconciled seeing a “white version of Jamie Foxx” as a way to “sell better overeas in movies.” Hollywood might try this real-life plot of Pootie Tang if they could, but the true explanation was much simpler. “I’m high as hell,” he revealed, adding that at the time he also thought his sister suspiciously “looked Puerto Rican.”
When a psyciatrist asked whether the Oscar winner was “alright,” Foxx comedically clapped back, “Am I alright or am I all white?”
“And he looks at my medicine stuff. He said, ‘I think we’re going to lower your dosage. … You’re high as f**k,” the doctor determined.
This isn’t the first time Foxx found the funny in his long road to recovery. The Ray star kept it real about his health, and even internet hoaxes about Diddy trying to kill him, in his 2024 comeback What Had Happened Was…
The legend’s new stand-up special promises to be his “most honest, evolved, and unforgettable chapter yet.” The 58-year-old already confronted death. In Take Care of Yourself, which premiered on Hulu Oct. 7, he’s facing his age while preparing for a new life with pregnant girlfriend Alyce Huckstepp.
Watch Jamie Foxx’s full interview with Big Boy below.
