Jamie Foxx, Netflix Special review - doctors and divine intervention

In April 2023 the actor and comic Jamie Foxx had a stroke and was lucky to survive. In his latest Netflix Special, What Had Happened Was... he tells us about it, and his recovery. It's fitting, he tells us, that the show was recorded in Atlanta, just 400 yards away from the hospital he was taken to by his sister, who knew something was seriously wrong.

The show is a curious – and undoubtedly unique – mix of comedy, music and thanksgiving that at times feels more like a revivalist meeting as Foxx attests repeatedly that God saved him. The religiosity – and there's a lot of it – may be off-putting for some, but there's no doubting his sincerity as he thanks not only God, but the doctors who treated him and the family members who would not allow him to give up.

It's not all praise be to God, though; there's a healthy dollop of praise be to Jamie Foxx and his monumental ego, too. But he's canny enough to know how far to take that. Well, mostly.

He talks about his recovery and the indignities of having to have a carer wipe his backside, and the temporary loss of libido. As you might expect, these parts are the laugh-out-loud bits, as is the imaginary conversation with his penis once it sprang back into action, and his response to the idea that “Jamie motherfucking Foxx” might benefit from some therapy during his long road back to good health – emotional as well as physical.

He says that just as his recovery was divine intervention, so the stroke must have been the punishment for his Hollywood lifestyle. So back to church for him, and no more running around with white women – well, “not in public” at least.

Along the way Foxx drops in stories and bang-on impressions, among them Donald Trump, Denzel Washington and Jay-Z, addresses internet theories that he had died and has been cloned, calls one of his daughters on stage to play a guitar solo (having been introduced on stage by another) and plays piano beautifully with a four-piece band – is there anything he can't do, and well? – before leading the audience in a God-praising singalong.

There is no doubting the emotional charge of this hour, even if the jokes in what is branded as a comedy special hardly come thick and fast. But this is a celebration of a second chance at life and as Foxx's new mantra has it: “If I can stay funny, I can stay alive.” Amen to that.

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