Jamie Foxx thought he was being pranked after waking from stroke
Jamie Foxx thought he was "being pranked" when he woke up in hospital after suffering a stroke because he didn't remember anything.
Jamie Foxx thought he was "being pranked" when he woke up in hospital after suffering a stroke.
The 'Back in Action' star "didn't remember anything" after suffering a brain bleed in April 2023 that led to him being unconscious for almost three weeks, so when he woke, he was convinced he had fallen victim to an elaborate joke.
Appearing on 'The Graham Norton Show', he said: “I was very unwell but now I am back feeling good. It makes you realise that you need people that care and love you around to get you through it.
"I didn’t remember anything happening so when I came to 20 days later I thought I was being pranked. It was beyond crazy."
The 57-year-old star used humour to get through his ordeal - but admitted he told so many jokes, people began to worry he had gone "mad".
He added: "I knew I had to get back and realised the way to do it was by being funny. I told so many jokes people thought I was mad, and then I would act as someone else – for three whole days I was Denzel Washington!”
The 'Creed III' star previously expressed his belief that his 16-year-old daughter Anelise's guitar playing saved his life.
Jamie - who has Anelise with Kristin Grannis and is also dad to Corinne, 30, from a relationship with Connie Kline - revealed that staff at Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital thought they were going to "lose" him in the first 13 to 15 days of his hospitalisation as his "vitals" were all over the place, but they miraculously started going "down" when the teenager started strumming the instrument at her father's bedside.
He recalled on his Netflix special 'Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was....': "They said at one point, the first 15 days, they thought they were going to lose me because my vitals were out of control.
"There was a 13- or 14-day period where they said, we’ve gotta keep him calm and we’ve given him every medication that they could. It’s not working, we gotta keep him calm because his vitals are so high we’re going to lose him."
He quipped: "Do you know what the worst thing to have in a hospital room when you’re trying to keep calm? Black family members."
The religious star believes God "was in that guitar" and that it acted as his "spiritual defibrillator".
He went on: "That’s when a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14. I didn’t want her to see me like that but she snuck into my hospital room with her guitar and she said, ‘I know what my daddy needs … that’s my daddy.’
"They said when she was playing, my vitals went down. The nurses at the nurses station were baffled. Like, 'Wow what did they give him?' They rushed into the room and she said, ‘Ssh. I got him.’ ... Do you know what I found out? That God was in that guitar. That’s my spiritual defibrillator."
Watch the interview with Jamie on 'The Graham Norton Show', BBC One, 17th January at 10.40pm. Also available on BBC iPlayer.
