Jamie Foxx has plenty to talk about these days. After going more than two decades without releasing a stand-up special, the Oscar winner is now preparing to release his second in two years. His latest, Take Care of Yourself, follows 2024’s What Had Happened Was…, the deeply personal Netflix special where he addressed the medical emergency that nearly took his life.

Something has clearly been unlocked. Foxx has returned to comedy with a renewed appetite for performing and an urgency to get his ideas out while he can. “Man, I got to get it out, because I had been sitting on stuff,” he said. “Now, I got Kill the Comedian. I got Black Forrest Gump. I got 10 hours’ worth of stuff I want to get out.”

Take Care of Yourself finds Foxx thinking about where he is now, both onstage and away from it. Music remains part of his act, and his daughter Anelise appears alongside him, playing guitar on the same Oakland stage where her father performed early in his career. Foxx also seems increasingly interested in what happens when a comedian sticks around long enough to watch himself change.

During his conversation with ESSENCE, Foxx reflected on fatherhood and the advice Oliver Stone once gave him about bringing his children to work. At 59, Foxx has a simple description for what keeps pulling him back to the stage: “I just keep the light on.”

ESSENCE: So, you’ve worked across so many major platforms. Why was Hulu the right fit for Take Care of Yourself?

Jamie Foxx: Because Hulu was emerging, changing. It was the right fit for me because I’m evolving as far as me as a comedian. I used to be performing and jumping and singing, and now I’m in my sort of talking, just being the first time I could be personal. I ain’t never talking about myself. My manager’s like, “Yo, bro, you got to talk about your shit. I hate it.” But then when this thing happened to me, now it forces me to talk differently.

I talked about it when Katt Williams said Jamie Foxx wasn’t funny. “What Had Happened Was wasn’t funny, sir.” (Laughs.) And I appreciate that because as a comedian, you need adversity. You need something to talk about. And so my life has been so perfect until this, and I don’t ever want to go through what I went through in order to have material, but it allows me to have a jumping-off point to talk about whatever’s funny or not funny. It gives me my story. And Hulu embraced it. They came and saw the early preparation of it, and they were just on it. So it makes sense.

When you hear people—whether it be critics, fans, comedians—and they say something you put out or your art isn’t funny, does that affect you in any way? How do you deal with that?

JF: I mean, we all get affected, but in this particular situation, I ain’t got to prove to nobody that I’m funny. However, the story and what I went through was the main ingredient. When we set up What Had Happened Was, it was like we took all the jokes and set them aside and said, “No, this is the story I want to tell.”

It was almost like I wanted to say, “This ain’t necessarily stand-up. This is a journey. This is something I want to get off my chest.” But I could do it. When I go to the club, I was in the club a few days ago and I see some of the comedians show up, sneak in to see what I’m on, but I see them, so I turn it up a notch. Twenty-five, 30 minutes of that hot shit. And they go, “Damn.” When I come off, I say, “Yeah, I’ve always been that. You ain’t never been this.” Just to keep that part intact. But when it comes to the other thing, this is something I want to do. I want to talk about what I went through. I hate to talk about it being old, but comedy grows you up. If you’re a real comedian, you have to eventually grow up. And that’s the thing, that’s where we are. And so I was fortunate. Hulu, Oakland, it all worked out.

Speaking of Oakland, what goes into the decision when you’re trying to choose what city and what venue you want to film your specials in?

JF: Oakland was where I started. In 1991, I won the BlackBerry comedy competition and the set was going to be different. At first it was going to be like, “when you come to Oakland to do business, what kind of business do you do? We do town business. We’re going to name it Town Business.” But then that scene, my daughter was like, “Dad, that’s kind of old. It’s a little, not corny, but it was like…”

Just like in Atlanta, I’m doing this special in a space where it’s two and a half days, and anybody would normally tell you that doing a special takes you a year. You’re going to hold it, but we don’t have that luxury. So when you go to a place like Oakland, I know they’re going to let me talk my shit. So, that’s why we decided to go there because it has something to do with the trajectory of my career, and I wanted my daughter to be on that same stage that her dad rocked out in 1991. And so to watch her on that stage, rocking her guitar, I said, “Ah, man, she doesn’t even know what this is doing to me.” And then to see how Oakland responded, and everything pointed to 415 and 510.

Your daughter, what is it like seeing her share the musical talent that you have?

JF: It’s crazy. She did that on her own. She’s self-taught. She taught herself how to play the guitar. She said, “Dad, I want my own lane.” Which you laugh, okay, all right, get your own lane. But she’s really taking it.

So, when I see her do that, and then we get a chance to be on the BET Awards with Kehlani and things like that, so she’s emerging. And my daughter is different. So we just did the Snoop Dogg Christmas special and I was like, I said, “Aren’t you just so happy?” She’s like, “Dad, I am happy, but chill.” I said, “What you mean? Just chill.” And Snoop is laughing, watching me try to get her excited. And then my daughter goes, “Dad, can I tell you something?” “What?” “You’re chalant.” I said, “What?” She said, “I’m nonchalant.”

Right. (Laughs.)

JF: She said, “You go ahead and do all that.” She said, “I’m over here chilling.” And so I protect that for her. So when she wanted to stay behind her hair, she said, “Dad, this is me. I just want to be…” So I let her have that, and it’s great to have your kid tag along with the talent and see her hold her own. So out of all of it, that’s one of the biggest, coolest takeaways of Take Care of Yourself.

The “chalant” thing—every time I see you, you’re always vibrant, you’re energetic, you’re always laughing, you’re always entertaining people, you’re always on. But when you finally turn off, what are some of the things that you do to relax and take care of yourself?

JF: I smoke weed. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Hey, no judgment over here, brother.

JF: No, I just chill. I don’t smoke it. I just let people around me smoke it. But I just chill, man. I do a little pickleball night every Wednesday on some old man shit. I just sit around with the homies and stuff like that, but I’m seldom off. Even when I’m sitting around with the homies, I’m working on some idea or some joke or some TV or movie thing. So that’s what actually allows me to relax.

I always like to describe your stand-up especially as more of an experience, especially these last two. When did you decide that music was going to be such a big part of your act?

JF: When I first started doing comedy back in the day in L.A., and it was D.L. Hughley and Steve Harvey and The Wayans and Rock, all them, what separated me was doing the music. I watched Adam Sandler go up at the Comedy Store. It was all Black artists. He had his guitar. So, when I watched him rock that, I said, “Oh, I’m going to take my thing.” Because I came from classical music. I used to do this joke about what if “Gin & Juice” was an opera: “Rolling down the street, smoking indo, sipping on gin and juice, the juice, bitch.” So it sort of changes the temperature in the room. And then now it’s become a thing.

People look towards that little last ending where you get on the piano and do whatever, and you do your thing. I don’t want it to just be stand-up comedy. My favorite was Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin and these guys who would just do everything. So we try to spice it up a little bit.

Why do you still need to come back to stand-up after such a successful career in film, television, and music?

JF: You know what it is? And I ran into Eddie and I was at Eddie’s house and everything was perfect. And he was like, “I want to go do stand-up.” I said, “Man, your house is too nice.” “What you mean?” “Man, it’s too nice. Then you got a scent.” He had some kind of scent pumping through there. And I said, “What is that?” He said, “That hibiscus.” (Laughs.) 

So as a stand-up comic, if you look at any of us as we get older, you just want your light on. That’s all. So I said, “I’ll never turn my light off.” I had turned my light off in early 2000. I wasn’t funny. I was doing rich jokes. I was on stage. “I just got that Range Rover. Anybody else?” I was like, “Man, what the hell are you talking about? So staying on feels good. And then I get a chance to run into younger comedians and artists and things like that, and I just keep the light on. That’s all I want to do is just keep the light on. And keeping the light on sort of gives me that energy.

How do you keep your light on?

JF: Don’t take yourself too seriously. You interview enough people when they start hiding behind glasses and they become this thing in their head. And that’s what I do. I don’t take it too seriously, man. I ain’t never been that way. Especially at this age, knock on wood. I’m like, “Man, I get a chance. I’m still getting a chance to get up to bat.” I’m just going to stay loose with it.

So before What Had Happened Was, it had been years since you had done a stand-up special. You have two in two years now. What kind of space are you in creatively?

JF: Man, I got to get it out, because I had been sitting on stuff. I didn’t really have anything to talk about. Just give me something to talk about. Now, I got Kill the Comedian. I got Black Forrest Gump. I got 10 hours’ worth of stuff I want to get out. So that’s why I’m thankful to Hulu for allowing me to talk my trash, to talk my thing. So it’s like now you get more urgent. I saw a guy, he was 97 years old a few days ago. He says, “Live, Foxx.”

He said, “Live.” “What do you mean?” He said, “You got to live.” He said, “Went like that.” So if time goes like that, I want to put fire in the furnace and things in the capsule. You know how they put it in the capsule? If I’m allowed to do it, I’m going to continue to do it.

The world has watched you raise Corinne and now we see Anelise coming into her own, but you’ve still been able to maintain a level of success too. What advice would you give a father that’s trying to balance his life and their career?

JF: I was talking to Oliver Stone a while back. I had just had my baby. I had my first child in ’94 and I’m getting ready to shoot a movie in ’98, so Corinne was four. I said, “Man, I’m a little on the fence about shooting this movie, man. I don’t want to be away from my kid.” He said, “Bring your kid to work.” I said, “Huh?” “Just bring her to work.” He said, “And that way she could watch you work and as she gets older, she could understand that if you do have to take off and be away for a minute, she understands that Daddy’s working in this capacity.”

So that’s what I would tell him. As much as you can, take them with you, man. Because the one thing you can’t get back is the time. You could tell your daughter, “I’m out here trying to do whatever,” but they don’t know. They just got here. They just know, “I’m sitting here at the house by myself.” So if you could rustle them up and take them with you, that’s the perfect ingredient. I think it helps because me and my two daughters—we’re tight. You feel me?

Read the original article on Essence.