#124: Jamie Foxx on Workout Routines, Success Habits, and Untold Hollywood Stories

This episode is one of my favorite I've ever done. Jamie Foxx (@iamjamiefoxx https://twitter.com/iamjamiefoxx) is an Academy Award-winning actor http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001NMYZXM/offsitoftimfe-20, a Grammy Award-winning musician http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001N97KEQ/offsitoftimfe-20, and a famous standup and improv comedian http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00152M7ZI/offsitoftimfe-20. He is, without a doubt, the most consummate performer and entertainer I have ever met. In the 2.5 hours we spent together in his home studio, he blew my mind. We cover a TON in this wide-ranging episode, including many never-before-heard stories. Here's just a tiny sample of what you'll hear: Jamie's workout routine Jamie's origin story -- how he used $400 to match a $1,000,000 party thrown by Puff Daddy; building up his network with Kanye, Jay Z, and Pharrell; expanding his fan base; and bombing horribly at the beginning. What he learned during the magic of In Living Color Jamie playing live music throughout our interview. Impersonations (and lessons learned from many of the following) -- Quincy Jones, Ed Sheeran, Ray Charles, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Cosby, Doc Rivers, Kermit the Frog, Sammy Davis, Jr., LeBron James, Bill Clinton, Tamara Rawitt, Shawn Wayans, Jim Carrey, Oprah Winfrey, Norman Lear, Mike Tyson, and others. The key skills Jamie learned from his grandmother. Jamie's parenting style. And much, much more... For all of the show notes and links from this episode, please check out: http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim. I hate shopping with a passion. And honestly I'm not good at it, which means I end up looking like I'm colorblind or homeless. Enter TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim, which provides you with your own personal stylist and makes it easier than ever to shop for clothes that look great on your body. Just go to trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim and answer a few questions, and then you'll be sent a trunk full of awesome clothes. They base this on your sizes, preferences, etc. The trunk is then delivered free of charge both ways, so you only pay for clothes that you keep. If you keep none, it costs you nothing. To get started, check it out at trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the worldís largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. ### And as always, thanks for listening!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Jamie Foxx?

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Tim Ferriss?

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:22Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. You know I've used them, and here's why. Especially in the holiday season, last-minute gifts, crowded airports, the family, you have enough crap to worry about during the holidays without having to think about mixing and matching, picking out, buying clothing. Trunk Club has your back. Here's how it works. Trunk Club takes the hassle out of shopping by shipping you a trunk of clothes that fit perfectly, make you look amazing, and in this case, they would include custom-picked fall and winter styles. So, go to trunkclub.com/tim. You answer a couple of simple questions about your style, preferences, and size, and you're assigned an expert stylist. They curate clothing from top-premium brands, and you approve of what you like. All this is free. And just like that, a trunk arrives on your doorstep, filled with hand-picked

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  clothing that are perfect for you. Try them on, keep what you like, easily return what you don't in their prepaid trunk. And this is not a subscription service. Super important, because I don't buy clothing that often, but I do it every once in a while, and I've used Trunk Club this way. You only pay for the clothes you keep from your trunk. No hidden charges, just great clothes. It's the busiest, most hectic time of the year, so save your brain cells. You can still look fantastic without spending a lot of time on trying to do that. Get started today, and Trunk Club will style you for free. Plus, free shipping both ways. You only pay for the clothing that you keep. So, check it out. trunkclub.com/tim. Again, that's trunkclub.com/tim.

• 1:47Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of ...of original designs from designers around the world, give your feedback and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So, check out some of my competitions and designs and some of your competitions and designs from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design.

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  So, check it out, 99designs.com/tim. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to a very exciting episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. At least, I hope it will be because it was for me. Of course, every episode, it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, whether they're in entertainment, military, chess, sports, or otherwise. How do they do what they do? What are their routines? What were their influences? Favorite books? What do they do for exercise? What is their favorite cereal? If it comes down to that, et cetera, et cetera. And this particular episode features Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx is the most consummate performer and entertainer I have ever met, and I've met a lot of people. He blew my mind.

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  We spent two and a half hours together in his studio at his home. He is an Academy Award-winning actor, Grammy Award-winning musician, and of course, he cut his teeth as a famous stand-up and improv comedian. He can do it all. And in our conversation, which goes all over the place, we do cover it all. And that includes him playing live music, just off the cuff. It includes impersonations, Oprah, Mike Tyson, Kermit the Frog, Bill Cosby, Clinton, Reagan, Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, and dozens more. Morgan Freeman. It goes on and on. But he also talks about his origin stories. So, how did he, for instance, match a $1 million party thrown by Puff Daddy with $400 in LA? How did he go about doing that?

• 3:59Tim Ferriss?

  How did he build up his fan base? What was it like to bomb in the beginning? That's B-O-M-B, not B-A-L-M, even though I said it that way. The connections initially, how did he connect with Kanye? How did he connect with Jay-Z, Pharrell, et cetera? And we get into a lot of nitty-gritty. We talk about hard times. We talk about what he learned from his grandmother, the skills he developed as a kid, what he uses as far as parenting style with his own kids, we go really deep and all over the place. I was so excited and nervous at the same time in this interview. It was one of those times, and for those of you who've done interviews, you'll know the feeling where the stuff that's coming out

• 4:40Tim Ferriss?

  is so good, you compulsively check the audio equipment to make sure that you're getting it. So, I hope to provide some bonus material on top of this, and we've had that before. For instance, where Arnold Schwarzenegger has answered some of your questions after the interview. And to get any of that, you will need to sign up for the newsletter. So just go to fourhourworkweek.com/friday. That is fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, forward slash friday, and that'll get you the five bullet Fridays, which is just a short bullet list of all the cool things that I've managed to find in a given week, and I send those out on Fridays. So sign up for that, and you might get some goodies

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  related to this episode. So check out Jamie on Twitter, at I M Jamie Fox, F O X X. And for all of the notes, all of the links, the resources and so on, from this episode, as always, you can find it at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast with all the other episodes. And that all having been said, holy shit, put on your seatbelt, have a cup of coffee, and please enjoy the incredible Jamie Fox.

• 5:51Tim Ferriss?

  Jamie, welcome to the show.

• 5:52Jamie Foxx?

  Man, thanks, buddy.

• 5:53Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so excited to be here. I'm admiring your setup here.

• 5:58Jamie Foxx?

  Crazy, right?

• 5:58Tim Ferriss?

  This is where the magic happens.

• 6:00Jamie Foxx?

  To be honest with you, a lot of magic happens here. For the people that are listening, we are actually in my studio, my home studio. Now, you know, studios, we're talking about tech world, studios because of the tech world, a lot of them dissipated in closed doors. Because if you think about when LMFAO came around, they didn't need studios. They did all of their music on a laptop.

• 6:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 6:25Jamie Foxx?

  Flying from here to Germany or whatever like that, and just dumped it on to, and just pressed up the CD or the iTunes. So studios have almost become obsolete. But there's something very interesting about this studio. First, just for people that are listening. This studio, and I'll describe it, it's, you know, it's sort of plush, the carpet is great. We're gonna sit next to a grand piano.

• 6:52Jamie Foxx?

  You hear the grand piano, which a lot of places.

• 6:59Jamie Foxx?

  So we keep a grand piano around just to make sure that we don't lose, you know, we don't get too techy. But what's interesting about it is, it's actually electric. But it's an electric grand piano, so we still have the wood to give you that warm sound. Uh, which, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense because as music starts to progress,

• 7:18Jamie Foxx?

  because of the way we record now, sometimes you lose a little bit of the heart of it. So I think within the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, it'll be, you know, this type of music, the real sound will, you know, remain.

• 7:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 7:31Jamie Foxx?

  If that makes sense. Now, the studio, when I first got the house, looked like a, a old porn set. It had a, it had like an old basement carpet and a couch and like a Metallica, uh, Metallica poster. And I was like, what would I do with this because I needed a place to, to work and, and do music. What's interesting now, I, I got a guy to change the whole place over and as you can see, we'll take pictures and show it for, for you, for you guys that are listening. But they did a very good job in it. But if you look over here, this is where we do the recording. There's, there's a booth, which is normal. But also the recording on both sides, we're able to do animation. We're able to do, uh, if we want to do ADR for movies.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  What is ADR?

• 8:14Jamie Foxx?

  ADR is like when you, um, like when we're doing a movie, but we're recording the, the movie outside. There's a lot of noise.

• 8:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you're doing pickup audio?

• 8:21Jamie Foxx?

  So we'll do pickup audio. So, uh, and so, and, and most, any actor or actress will tell you ADR is the worst thing in the world to do. So to be able to have here, have it here, I could do my ADR here, I could do my animation here and things like that. And so, just the, now the, the studio itself, the actual brains of the studio, it's an old hard drive. And the reason I kept that old hard drive, I used to have a smaller studio in a smaller house. But when I had that small studio, I wasn't in music. I built the studio in my smaller house because I wanted to get into music. But I was from comedy and from acting and things like that. But what I would do is I would throw parties.

• 9:01Jamie Foxx?

  And I would invite musical people over, uh, at the party, like, but, and when they would come over, like, if I had Puff or Snoop, or back at that time, John B. or Brian McKnight. I would say, hey, man, you know, I'm trying to get into music. Would you leave me some music in my studio? So people would leave me like sixteen bars, twenty-four bars.

• 9:19Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning they would, they would record something while they're in the studio?

• 9:23Jamie Foxx?

  They would record, we'd have the party going. I say, hey, man, let's go in the back. You know, while we're drinking and whatever like that and go in. I say, hey, man, just leave me a little something because I was trying to get into, uh, to music. And then I met this kid, uh, named Brian Prescott. Basketball, you know, we played basketball and all this kind of stuff, pick up basketball games. And he said, hey, man, why don't you ever do music? I said, man, I'm trying to get into that shit, man. I just, you know, don't know how to get into. And then one day, he, I throw this big party. And, uh, it was, uh, uh, the party was, was crazy because, as I digress a little bit, I would follow Puffy Combs around back in the day when it was just like Puff and J-Lo and that. And back at that time, no one could get into his parties.

• 10:06Jamie Foxx?

  But the reason he would let me in because I would carry a camera with me everywhere I go. But it was back in the day, day, like, you know, the big Canon cameras.

• 10:13Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, he would let you in because you carried a camera?

• 10:15Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, because at that time, I wasn't Jamie Foxx. I was just Jamie Foxx. And, uh, uh, so I couldn't get into all the parties because Puff was so big. Like, he come to L.A., we couldn't even get in our own clubs.

• 10:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 10:26Jamie Foxx?

  But I popped, I, I, I took a town car everywhere he went, jumped out of the town car one day and said, yo, Puff, can I record?

• 10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Now, at that point, he didn't know you at all?

• 10:33Jamie Foxx?

  He knew me, he knew me, the kid that was on Living Color or whatever like that. But it wasn't elevated.

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 10:38Jamie Foxx?

  And plus, he was having parties that were like huge, like nobody's getting it. And so there was, he saw me with the camera, he's like, yo, let him through. And it was back in the day, it was like the big Canon camera with the light and I had to change the battery. It wasn't like how today, you just got your, you know, your phone in your pocket. And, you know, I had, I had production. But, uh, I would follow him around. And then one day, we had this, this party in Philly that I, I recorded for him. And he said, yo, yo, money, you know how much this party costs? I said, what? He said, it costs a million dollars for this party. I said, you paid a million dollars for a party? He was like, yeah, that's how we. I told Puff, I challenged him, I said, I'll throw you a party at my house in L.A., which is way smaller than this situation, but I'll spend maybe four hundred dollars and it will rival this party, not in the scale of it, but in the type of people that are there.

• 11:22Jamie Foxx?

  And he was, he was a little upset, you know, Puff is a, you know, he, he always likes to win.

• 11:26Tim Ferriss?

  He's a competitive guy.

• 11:27Jamie Foxx?

  He's a competitive guy. He said, yo, you must have your motherfucking mind, Playboi, you don't understand the essence of this part. And I was like, alright, I, I get it. And he actually came to LA a few weeks later. And it was a Saturday, he said, yo, Playboi, make that shit happen. So he calls me like nine in the morning, right?

• 11:43Tim Ferriss?

  For that night?

• 11:44Jamie Foxx?

  For, in the morning. He just said, for the day, for the day. I said, no problem. So I go into my cell phones, call, I, I have a, I have a list of people uh, that since I first came to LA, the way I got into uh, um, um, knowing everybody. I was the first, I was the first social media guy without social media. I would go do a stand-up comedy routine at a club. If they liked the routine, I had cue cards back in the day. And would have people sign cue cards, sign their name, did you like the set? Give me your pager number, I will text you and let you know where I would be.

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  You were ahead of the curve.

• 12:25Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Tim Ferriss?

  So they were like index cards?

• 12:27Jamie Foxx?

  Index cards, so a box, and I had these, get rid of this fly, man. Stop before I say.

• 12:33Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, so we're picking back up, I just have to, we took a fly break.

• 12:36Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, so it was a fly assaulting my man.

• 12:38Tim Ferriss?

  I just have to admire this, cause the studio is, what would you say, maybe like thirty, thirty by fifteen feet on the floor and then another fifteen feet tall. And you said, I'm gonna stop and get this fly.

• 12:50Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, I saw the fly assaulting my man.

• 12:53Tim Ferriss?

  This is a lot of space, and it took you about seven seconds to track this fly down and kill it, I was very impressed.

• 12:58Jamie Foxx?

  We gotta get shit done in here, we don't have time.

• 13:00Tim Ferriss?

  So, so the cue cards?

• 13:01Jamie Foxx?

  So, so what, so I would get cue cards, and, and, and like I said, I would send it, you know, I, I had a list of about eight hundred people. I had six hundred women, because women at that time, this is like around ninety, ninety-one, women at that time loved to go to comedy clubs. So it was all the pretty girls, cause pretty girls like to laugh, you know, and you got eight, nine girls together, Jamie, you so crazy, whatever. And so, uh, I had eight hundred singers, just two hundred guys, because they wanted to be where the girls were. So I would take that list and also say, okay, well now I'm having a party here, here, here, whatever, whatever, if you wanna come by. So that same list, along with the other people that I met as I. As I started to grow in the business, I text and said, I'm throwing a party for Puff. And this one Puff had, uh,

• 13:49Jamie Foxx?

  we ain't going nowhere was out. And it was bl- it was popping. I mean, even the LA dudes was like, man, we don't wanna fuck with this New York dude. But this shit is so, the song is so hot. So, I text, I said, listen, um, um, Puff is coming. And the people that I text were only cool people. Like, no guys that'd be hatin'. You know, uh, the girls are pretty, uh, uh, not slutty, but not, not too tight. Right. You know what I mean? The Goldilocks. It was just, it was just really, it was, um, it was, um, it was, um, um. And so, I hit him at 12 noon, I said, yo, where you at? We're at a Fever Pitch. It's going off over here in my little house. And when he gets there, his mind is blown. And, you know, he shows up with the entourage, then, you know, he, Puff was, he was like, that's me. Okay.

• 14:34Jamie Foxx?

  And he walked in, he says, oh, that's the girl from that show. And that's the girl on this, and I said, yeah, Puff, we, we all live out here. You know, so all the people you see in Hollywood, I, I know they're my friends. And so he's like, oh shit, so the party's incredible. We're playing his music through my little sound speakers. Everybody's really toasting him. And I said, Puff, the people that are here are different in this. Oh, what the fuck? It's another fly. Hold on, stay right there.

• 15:05Jamie Foxx?

  Good night. Two for two. Two for two. So, so, so, so he's, he's admiring that, that, it's, it's crazy. And, um, and, and everybody's in tune with him. And I explained to him, I said, Puff, let me explain to you who you are. I said, these are the people who not only live in LA, but I think I've found the right set of people who appreciate the art as well. Because what you do musically and what you're doing on the artistic side is blowing our minds as well. And I said, Therefore, look at the table. I only spent four hundred dollars on the table. There's Kentucky Fried Chicken. I just put it in a nice bowl. Uh, there's cola. I just put them in pitchers. I said, so no more than four hundred dollars, but people are here. I said, because here's the thing.

• 15:49Jamie Foxx?

  A fitted baseball cap, New York, fitted, is fifty-eight dollars maybe retail. I said, but Puff on your hat, on your head is priceless. We just wanna be around this fly shit, right? So we partying, Puff is partying, and there's the dude standing, uh, next, uh, like, on the wall. No one's talking to him. He got a little green jump jacket on. Guess who it was? It was Jay-Z. Nobody knew who he was. Jay-Z, I said, yeah, I know that dude. Uh, Missy Elliott has one room, Puff has the other room. Then I go to my garage to grab some other drinks, and I see this tall dude and this little dude, and, and, and they're like, the little guy goes, yo, B, it's like this all the time. I said, yeah, what you mean? You know, the girls and karaoke. I said, yeah, yeah, man, who are you? Oh, we're the Neptunes. My name is Pharrell. I said, yeah, man, I heard of you.

• 16:33Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, man, I like your shit. So that's how long ago this was.

• 16:37Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 16:37Jamie Foxx?

  So here's how I make the music play, though. So as Puff is there, I get people to leave me different bits of music or whatever, like, cause I'm trying to get into the music thing. So I turn that into a show, in a sense, to where I would just have different people I would toast, and try to, you know, get my music on. So one day, my boy Brian brings in this kid. He has a backpack on. His jaw's a little busted. His name is Kanye West. And I say, yo, yo, who's, who's that? They said, yo, that's a new kid, Kanye West, he coming on. I said, really? What he do? He said, he rap. I said, well, shit, he gotta perform that shit, cause everybody comes to this, to my house, they gotta perform. So I said, yo, man, they say you the shit. And he was really quiet, you know? I said, man, let me hear you rap.

• 17:22Jamie Foxx?

  You need your beats or whatever? He said, I don't need no beat. Freestyle. Blew every, I mean, chopped everybody's heads, just amazing. I said, dude, I don't know where you come from, but you are going to be one of the biggest stars ever. And he says, I actually have a song for you. I said, moi? Me, a song? Like, what you mean? He said, I got this song. He says, I wanna record it. I said, well, you happen to be in luck, because I got a studio in the back. So we go in the back, and my studio at that time, I called it The Porsche. It was a lot smaller than this. It was really like, it was like a, uh, It was like a Learjet. It was compact. It was compact, the sound was toasty. I had engineers from all over the, the, the city dial it in so that when real artists come,

• 18:07Jamie Foxx?

  they don't think that, oh, this is just comedian fucking around, some real shit. So we go in and, and, and, and Kanye, you know, quiet, but, but at the same time, he knew what he wanted. He says, okay, the song goes like this. She say she want some Marvin Gaye, some Luther Vandross, a little. I said, I got it. And I started going, she say she want some Marvin Gaye. And he said, what the fuck are you doing? I said, well, see, young man, you don't know nothing about R and B. See, I'm an R and B motherfucker. See, I, I got to give him the shit, you know, I got to put the shit on it. And he goes really politely, he says, hits the, the button, he says, uh, don't do that. I said, but you don't know what you're talking about, brother. Uh, that ain't how the song go. You gotta sing it this way. So in my mind, I'm thinking, you know what, I'm gonna sing this shit. The song is whack.

• 18:53Jamie Foxx?

  It's not gonna make it. Cause I'm thinking old school R and B. But he was teaching me the simplicity of hip hop, which I didn't know. I was like, whatever. Cool guy, great rapper. I don't think it's gonna happen for him. So I go off and do a bad movie. And when I come back, my boy says, remember that song you said was whack? I said, yes, number one in the country. You, Kanye and Twister, Kanye's first record. And it was actually Twister's record. I said, oh shit. So I'm at a club, he says, you don't believe me? I said, no, I'm, we're in Miami. He, they played it, everybody ran to the dance floor. I grabbed the mic, said, that's me, that's, that's, that's my song. I'm, I'm on that, you know? And so the music, that's how I got into the music.

• 19:33Jamie Foxx?

  Now, the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use, that same hard drive that we use, I brought it to this studio. I hope not. So that hard drive is, is magical because we also did, just to give you a history on, on the music. Brian found that song, Slow Jams, it went number one. And then as we started getting into music, there was a song that Brian brought in. And he would play these, Brian would call me, like he said, you wanna be in the music business? It's like, you know, two or three in the morning, he called me, says, you wanna be in the music business? I said, yeah. He said, then wake your ass up. I said, what? He said, I got this song you gotta hear. So I drove all the way from my house in the valley to this, to this, uh, to this, to this little studio. He says, so you ready, motherfucker?

• 20:18Jamie Foxx?

  Are you ready? And Brian always says everything three times. Are you ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? Are you ready? I said, yeah, yeah, man, play the shit. So he plays it. And the song was, blame it on the goose, got your feeling loose, blame it on the, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. I stopped it. I said, listen. First of all, please tell me that's my song. He said, yeah, it's your song, but you gotta record it right now. Because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not. He said, but I know it's a hit. We did Blame It on the Alcohol. That night, I sung it exactly like the record, which goes way in contrast to my R and B roots. Cause it was autotune and everything like that, but we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo. So we wouldn't lose the essence of it. I don't wanna be like, blame it on the alcohol, you know, some corny shit. So we did that.

• 21:01Jamie Foxx?

  And then we went from every, the way we broke that record is that we went from every club. We went to the strip clubs first. Went to the strip clubs? Strip club. We went, we went, we did an east coast run. So we were going to break the record in the east coast. So we went to the strip, we went to New York. Uh, my man Peckus took us around. Uh, and I would go into the club and use my comedic, you know, vernacular to get the song off. I said, fellas, you ever been, uh, at the club, you meet a girl, you been drinking? You think she look like Halle Berry, you get her back home, she looks like Halle Scary, you know what you gotta do? Blame it on the goose, got your feeling loose, blame it on the, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Stop the record. Ladies, you ever meet a guy, you get back to the house with him and you been drinking too much?

• 21:45Jamie Foxx?

  And you say, I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway? You gotta blame it on the, ah, ah, ah, ah. So we took that and we went all the way down from New York, all the way down to Miami. This is like two thousand eight. And then the song took off. And so. Long story, longer. Blaming on alcohol is done here, slow jams is done here. So this studio has that, that essence to it that you just, you don't throw that away. And just the building itself, Natasha Beddingfield's been here, she's cut. Kelly Rowland's been here, she's cut. The game has been here, he's cut. Right here on this floor, and I'm showing, uh, for you guys listening, I'm pointing to the floor, to the carpet.

• 22:25Jamie Foxx?

  A young man by the name of Ed sharing, slept on this carpet for like six weeks. Uh, trying to get his music career going. Uh, he came from over from London. He heard about a, a live show that I do in LA. Said, really wanna, uh, do your live show if it's possible? Uh, you know, because I have some music that I look like, here this kid with this red hair. I'm like, man, you do my live show? And it's all, it's mostly black, you know what I'm saying? But it's really like music people, like really hardcore music people. They're very finicky. You know, people that have played for Stevie Wonder, people will come there to, I mean, I had Miranda Lambert one night. I had Stevie Wonder on stage, I had Babyface. I said, so this is the real shit you talking about? You know, you come here, I don't care about the London and the accent. You gotta really come with it.

• 23:10Jamie Foxx?

  He said, I think I'll be okay. I said, alright. So I take it to my live night, eight hundred people there. People's playing, black folks sweating and just getting it, you know what I'm saying? People singing and, you know, they would, they would tear American Idol up, you know? So these people don't necessar- hasn't, haven't necessarily made it. So all of a sudden Ed sharing gets up with a ukulele. Walks out onto the stage. And the brother that was next to me was like, yo Fox, man, who the fuck is this dude right here, man? With the red hair and shit and the fucking ukulele? I said, man, his name is Ed sharing, let's see what he does. But then 12 minutes, he got a standing ovation. Wow. From that crowd. And I said, bro, you on your way.

• 23:49Jamie Foxx?

  So this studio has a, like I said, a lot of history and it has that magic to it as well. The mojo. Yeah.

• 23:58Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you, you mentioned getting into music. But it seems like, from what I've read of you, that music in some ways came first.

• 24:07Jamie Foxx?

  Music did. Music did. My, when I was a kid, my grandmother made sure that I took piano lessons. And you know, that's tough for a little boy in Texas. You know, playing Fery Lees and Chopin and Mozart.

• 24:22Tim Ferriss?

  And we're not talking about Houston or...

• 24:24Jamie Foxx?

  No, we're talking Terrell, Texas. And I love my city. My city was dope because it was only 12,000 people. So it was like, literally like 12 or 15 families. So we all knew each other. But you know, for a little boy playing at that time, you know, the kids didn't understand, yo, man, why you doing that? My grandma want me to do this, you know? And so I would, sometimes I would be belligerent, be like, why you want me to do this? She says, "The reason I want you to learn classical piano is because I want you to be able to go across the tracks and play your music." For people listening, across the tracks or on the other side of the tracks for a southern city was, the tracks in a southern city separates the city. One side is black, the other side is white.

• 25:05Jamie Foxx?

  So in our city, the south side, the south side of town was where all the black folk live. The north side of town was where the white folks live. So she says, "I want you to be able to go on the white side of town and play classical music." So she taught me how to play classical piano, a lady by the name of Lenita Hodge taught me how to play classical piano. And I literally would go on the other side of the tracks and, you know, and start playing for like wine and cheese parties and things like that. But my grandmother took it a step further too, because she was able to see the future.

• 25:37Jamie Foxx?

  Here's a lady with an eighth grade education. She had her own business for 30 years. She had her own nursing school business. She says, "When I say across the tracks, I don't just mean in Terrell and those people over there. I mean the metaphor, like across the track, like meaning everywhere in the world." So you, she said, "Because music connects you to the, to the whole world." So in doing... That I would connect with people on the other side of tracks who, you know, in a southern city, Ontario, you know, we were a little, we were a little behind the curve when it came to race relations. Let's just say it that way without, you know, I don't want to demonize my, my hometown, but there was, there was that, who's a little black kid? And my grandmother be like, don't, you know, play. Do your thing.

• 26:22Jamie Foxx?

  And when I would play, you know, a lot of that broke up, broke up, you know, broke up. I remember even like being armed with just my music in sort of that racial setting and some, sometimes. Like there was a, a time when there was a Christmas party. Were these paid gigs? Yeah, I make like, man, I get like ten, fifteen dollars. You know what I'm saying? At that time was a lot of money and I played for the church. So playing for the church, I would make like, uh, seventy-five dollars a week. So if you count that up, that's like three hundred a month, you know? Real money. That's real money at thirteen, fourteen. My grandmother would take the money though, said, put it, you know, and give me this money. So, "Grandma, what you doing with my money?" "Shit, you ain't paying, you ain't paying no rent, you gonna give me this money." So, but I remember at that time being armed with just my music and, uh, there was a Christmas party that I was supposed to play for.

• 27:05Jamie Foxx?

  Myself and my best friend who was seventeen, I was sixteen at the time. And so here's a little bit of the, the racial misunderstanding, shall we say. I went to play for the guys, Christmas time, maybe it's like December seventeenth. And we show up, there's two little black kids on the white side of town. And, uh, when he opens his door and he sees these two little black kids, he says, "What's going on here?" I said, "Well, I'm, I'm here to play, uh, for your Christmas party." "Sure, then why are two of you here at the same time?" I said, "Well, I don't have a license, he, you know, he drove me." Uh, "Is there a problem?" "Yeah, there's a problem, I can't have two niggers in my house at the same time." And I was like, "Oh, well, you know, and I've been sort of used to the racial misunderstandings." And I said, "Well, i- is there any way he could wait outside or wait?"

• 27:50Jamie Foxx?

  And he can't wait on the street, starts at six-thirty, now you gotta make your, make your mind up now. So I, I said, I told my boy, I said, "Let's just come get me at eight-thirty." Which was pretty late, you know, for kids at that time, you know? Uh, so I go in. He says, "Where's your tuxedo?" I said, "Well, he didn't tell me to have a tuxedo." So we go into this room, which looks like a bedroom, and I'm looking like, why the fuck does he have clothes hanging up in his bedroom? But it was a walk-in closet. I've never seen no shit like that. I'm like, I don't know. We make a split-level condo out of this shit. So he gives me a Brooks Brothers jacket that had the patches on the elbows. I'm like, oh shit, high for looking. So now I'm really playing, you know, I'm getting.

• 28:31Jamie Foxx?

  But as I'm playing, uh, they were doing, uh, the grownups there were doing, uh, racially misunderstanding jokes. I'll say it like that. And my grandmother taught me something at that time. She said, uh, when you're in a setting like that, uh, there's a word I want you to remember is called furniture. I said, what's that? She said, you're part of the furniture. So you don't comment on what's being said. You play, that's what you're there for, and you let these people enjoy their. And the lady at the house felt bad. She said, I just want to apologize to you for what they're saying. I said, no problem. She said, can you sing something for us? And I was like, sure, I could sing something for us. And this was the song that I sang.

• 29:16Jamie Foxx?

  Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

• 29:23Jamie Foxx?

  Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

• 29:31Jamie Foxx?

  You'll take hell's being sung by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimos.

• 29:45Jamie Foxx?

  Everybody, anyway. So as I'm singing, I remember watching those white guys, older men, some of them faculty at my school, that had just said something, you know, probably not, I don't think it was that they meant harm, harm, but it was.

• 30:02Tim Ferriss?

  They'd have to, they'd have to resign today.

• 30:03Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah. And they look and they go, they, they immediately changed. It's, wow, man, that's good. You know any other songs? And I sat and I did about, maybe like a six-song set. And I saw what my grandmother talked about, that music cracked them in half. They saw a different me. And then afterwards, he gave me a hundred bucks. And I'm like, shit, call me nigga every day. I got a hundred dollars. I'm rich.

• 30:29Jamie Foxx?

  And what was interesting was I went to give him the jacket back. He's like, no, I don't, I can't wear the jacket. So it was still a little bit of residue left over. But I saw what the music did and I remember when my, when my boy showed back up, I said, listen, it was a cool gig, we got paid, I said, but I gotta get out of here. I said, because I'm too smart for this, uh, I need to go elsewhere. And I did, I changed my major, well, I changed the college that I was gonna go to. I was gonna go to another college in Texas and study music instead. I came to California, San Diego, to study music, uh, at International University. And what was interesting about that was, is that being in Texas, it was black, whites and Mexicans.

• 31:10Jamie Foxx?

  When I got to International University, it was eighty-one different countries represented at that school, all connected by music and other things, music or sports. Uh, in the music, the music arena at that time was high-end, strict, child prodigies from Japan, child prodigies from China. I had a Russian, uh, uh, music teacher and I had a Yugoslavian music theory teacher. So it was, it was really across the tracks. But, uh, because of that, because of Estelle Tally and Mark Tally, you know, picking me up every, uh, weekend to go play music, um, man, I, it, it set me on a, like I said, a, a crazy wonderful journey.

• 31:53Jamie Foxx?

  And, uh, so the music was first, you know, and, um, my college was interesting. I didn't know anything about Jewish, Palestinian, I had no idea. I was at the student center and there was this argument going on, you know. So what, what are you arguing about? Oh, my brother, my brother, my friend, they're talking about the Gaza Strip. I said, what the fuck is that? And they said, no, the Jewish, the occupation, the this, the that. And I had a, I got a quick, I got a quick, uh, history lesson on, on that. I got a quick history lesson on people from Argentina. Or I would see a person who looked black and I'd be like, hey, what's up, brother? Bonjour, what's up, little? And I'd be like, oh shit, where are you from? I was from Paris.

• 32:38Jamie Foxx?

  I was like, what the fuck, they got black people? So that music gave me not only an opportunity to share, but opportunity to be educated by other people, because we studied Texas history. And in studying Texas history is interesting. Like if you study Texas history, if it didn't happen in Texas. It didn't happen. So when you look at, like, this is just a sidebar. But when you think about politics and what people know and don't know in politics, and what they know about across the sea, or what they know about even on the next block, or what they know about what's different in Texas from New York, the reason that politics is so interesting is because the people don't necessarily have educations of other people. Which is why I think that once we start opening up

• 33:23Jamie Foxx?

  a little more and traveling a little more, because, what is it, less than how many percent? Less than, well, less than 5% of Americans have passports and things like that.

• 33:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's a small number, yeah.

• 33:32Jamie Foxx?

  So, so anyway, that music, like I said, took me, took me everywhere.

• 33:37Tim Ferriss?

  What other, your grandmother seems like a very wise woman, and I've heard you describe her, and I might be, I'm sure I'm paraphrasing this, but that she, she was the bow, or had the o, and you were the arrow. And she pointed you in different directions. I'm wondering what other, like, you are the furniture, right? I mean, when to speak, when not to speak. What other lessons did you learn from your grandmother?

• 34:01Jamie Foxx?

  My grandmother taught me confidence as well. My grandmother was a very confident person, and, uh, very smart. And just, I, I would you say, just naturally intelligent. She was a, a, a, a tourist. You know what I'm saying, natural. It was like, it wasn't something that was super educated or anything like that. But you just had a na- I, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you a, a hint of my grandmother. I'm 10 years old, maybe. I think I'm in the fifth grade, 76, President Carter. The preacher started preaching about homosexuality. I don't know what it is, I'm, you know, 10, or 8, or whatever. So he's saying, "God made Adam and Eve, God didn't make Adam and Steve."

• 34:44Jamie Foxx?

  So people's like, you know, it's southern, it's Texas, amen. My grandmother stood up and said, "You stop that." And the whole church stopped. "What's that, Ms. Taylor? You stopped that." Now, her words, what she said next was very interesting. "Let me tell you something. I've had this nursery school for 30 years, and I want to let all y'all know that God makes sissies too." And the whole place went, "What?" She said, "These little boys that I've watched since they could walk."

• 35:17Jamie Foxx?

  They they play by they play by different music. And you stop that because you're making it hard for them to navigate. Sits down, he goes to another subject. Eventually, he leaves the church. But I found that very interesting. But at that time, I didn't know what that meant until I got to be about eighteen. I was like, what was you talking about? She says, yeah, it's true. She says, you know, I've had this nursery school. I I see the difference in the kids. And so therefore, I would have these kids come to me after they graduated from high school, gone to college, or tried to have a family, although they had they were living with this. So she was the type of woman who had natural intelligence. I said, well, Granny, well, what does it say about religion? Doesn't it say that it's that it's wrong?

• 36:02Jamie Foxx?

  You know, being a, you know, kid from Texas, it's a natural question. She says, you know, when I think about it? She said, you have to open up the umbrella of religion. I said, what do you mean? She said, if you only open up the umbrella halfway, only a few people can stand under it. She said, you have to open the umbrella all the way through so God's children can stand on it. Because no one here did not get made by anybody else or anything else but God. So that was my grandmother, you know?

• 36:30Tim Ferriss?

  It seems very, uh, with the move in church, man, that's a very bold move, very courageous move.

• 36:36Jamie Foxx?

  Very bold, very bold. But my grandmother raised those people in church. See, I was adopted, you know, at seven months, so she was much older. So all of the kids that were there, whether, and it was like I said, it was only a few families that lived in Terrell. So all of the kids that grew up, or all of the grownups that were there, she.

• 36:52Tim Ferriss?

  She was the matriarch.

• 36:54Jamie Foxx?

  Because during during the year, it was a it was a it was a it was a school. You know what I'm saying? But then during the summer, you drop your kids off at my at my grandmother's house and just let them keep them. So she was very, uh, powerful in that sense. And then, when I did finally make it, it was wonderful to tell my grandmother, come live with me. So my grandmother was living with me. So we go to the clubs. You know, my grandma was like. She had to be eighty-three at the time. She would go to the clubs, we'd hang out, you know what I'm saying?

• 37:23Tim Ferriss?

  This is in L.A.

• 37:24Jamie Foxx?

  This is in L.A. I had a little apartment, split-level condo, remember when that was hype? The split-level condo. So I had a loft, oh yeah, Ricardo, he's only nineteen, he doesn't know what I'm talking about. But I had a loft, and we were living in that loft, and then we eventually rented a house and me and my grandma, and I didn't know I was a mama's boy. Like, we'd go to the parties, come back, we'd have an after-party at the crib, and then one of my homies came and said, "Yo, uh, your fox, uh, saw an older lady out here, uh, in the, in the front room." I said, "Yeah, that's my grandmother, what's that?" "Uh, yeah, it's a cool," I said, "yeah," and then he hears a bottle of champagne pop. "What we doing? We getting into what?" you know? So, uh, she was, uh, she was amazing, man. So, you know, my grandmother, you know, we'd party, hang, have a good time, and she was

• 38:08Jamie Foxx?

  eighty-three years old, and then the big thing was, is like, Granny, you know, it's Christmas time, why don't we do something we ain't never done? You know, you, you sell, making a little money? Why don't we go to Hawaii for Christmas? Because I got some friends from Hawaii. "Well, what, yeah, well, let's get it going, gas up the plane," right? So we, uh, fly to Hawaii one year, and I, it was just amazing to be able to show my grandmother another side of the world. It even made the papers in Terrell, Texas, Estelle Tally, uh, on her way to Hawaii, you know? And I remember, and you know, just a fun, just a fun time. I remember, um, we're having a good time, we're going everywhere, and she had a boyfriend at the same time, who was eighty-three, too.

• 38:50Jamie Foxx?

  And he was on the, you know, he was on the land side, and so, so it was like December twenty-third, and we, uh, we called her boyfriend, just so they could talk. So she's on the phone, "Mm-hmm, yeah, having a good time. Mm-hmm, oh yeah, yeah, weather's nice, mm-hmm, sunny. Our food is good, I got my own seasonings, though, mm-hmm. Real nice." Well, I tell you what, look, I'm gonna go, but let me tell you something. Don't let me come back there and, uh, catch you with no young girls. You understand? Because I don't play that. Let me catch you with no young girls, you hear me? So she hangs up, you know, it's like three or four families there, we're having like a little Christmas party, and we all go, "Granny, what? When you said the young girls, what you talking about? You know sixty, sixty-five, and I don't want to mess with no sixty-five."

• 39:34Jamie Foxx?

  She says, "Shit, I'm eighty-three, you know, so I ain't had no sixty-five-year-old woman all in my shit." So she was just a... Great person, tough girl. Uh, I remember there was some situations where I did make it and some people in my family felt like I should give them all of my money. This lady walks in and we're in my apartment, she comes and says, "My rich cousin." I didn't even recognize, cause I, you know, I hadn't, I had only seen him maybe once or twice growing up. So anyway, it gets around to it, she says, "I need ten thousand dollars for a kidney." I'm like, "Who's kidney?" "Well, I need kidney surgery," or something like that. "So if you give me the cash, I could take it and get the..."

• 40:18Jamie Foxx?

  I said, "Well, why don't you, if it's a situation of medical, I, I know some doctors, maybe they can help you." "Oh, I would prefer the ten thousand dollars." "That's probably okay, I'll hit you." And I didn't call back, I was like... So that became a problem for her. And she called me one day and left on the answer machine. "Young fella, it's the last time you seen an answer machine." So I'm checking my answer machine and she leaves this scathing message. "Well, you know what, I didn't get the money from you." "And that's fine, cause you're not part of his family anyway, he was adopted. Nobody wanted you anyway." This is what this lady is saying to me. Brutal. I said, "What the hell?" So I let my grandmother hear it, "Let me run that back."

• 40:58Jamie Foxx?

  Played it, "Mm-hmm, what's that number?" And she called and I, I remember listening, now I'm grown, you know, I'm, I'm twenty-two. So I'm grown and I hear how she stuck up for me. She says, "Let me explain something to you, boy." And I could hear, I got the bow when he was seven months old. I said, "And everybody wanted him, I wanted him, uh, everybody, you know." I said, "And he may not be blood, but he's our family." And it just, it was this incredible, incredible thing. My grandmother was absolutely amazing, I think you need people like that. And when you talk about that bow, that's what, that's my reference to, to raising kids. And I got my own kids now, is that when you raise your kids, you are the bow and arrow. You're the bow, they're the arrow, and you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can.

• 41:42Jamie Foxx?

  And hopefully, uh, your aim isn't too off. And that's what she did for me. And then, uh, you know, she watched my whole career, uh, all the way up until getting nominated for an Oscar. Where all of the things that she taught me came into play. When we did, uh, Ray Charles, that was an opportunity to play the piano.

• 42:07Jamie Foxx?

  To be funny, to do an impersonation. And all these things was what my grandmother championed. So when we embarked upon that film, I was like, oh, man. Granny was right. This is taking me on the other side of the tracks. And when we got in, even when I got a chance to meet Ray Charles, which, you know, that's my grandmother's era, you know? And she didn't get a chance to meet him because at the time she was, you know, she couldn't move bedridden a little bit. But being around older people, you know, I understood that muscle too. Because I was always the young kid with the old parents. So, meeting Ray Charles was like seeing my grandfather, seeing one of my uncles.

• 42:49Jamie Foxx?

  And when I met Ray, and we were trying to do Ray Charles a movie. And Taylor Hackford, who was the director, and he said, you know, I've been wanting to do this movie for 25 years. I'm glad you came along because it's the right time. And I remember meeting Ray Charles, walking down his studio, you know, clean, you know? Looked like, almost like he could see, you know? And I said, "Mr. Charles, you know, I'm just trying to do the best I can to, you know, to do your movie, your biopic." He said, "You know what? Look, if you could play the blues, man, shit, you could do anything, man." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "And just can you play the blues? Shit, that's what I'm asking." I said, "Well, I guess so, then, come on." And we go and we sit down. And all of the hard work that my grandmother put in,

• 43:32Jamie Foxx?

  all of the days my grandfather drove me to piano lessons. Here I am, sitting with a legend. And we were like...

• 43:47Jamie Foxx?

  And I was like, playing the blues with Ray Charles. And as we're playing, I'm like, I'm on cloud nine. Then he moved into some intricate stuff, like the Lonnie's Monk.

• 44:00Jamie Foxx?

  And I was like, "Oh, shit, I gotta catch up." And I hit a wrong note. And he stopped, because his ears are very sensitive. "Now, why the hell would you do that?" I said, "What was that? Why you hit the note like that? That's a wrong note, man, shit." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Charles." I just said, "Let me tell you something, buddy. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just gotta take the time out to play the right notes. That's life." So that was a lesson.

• 44:28Jamie Foxx?

  That the notes are right underneath your fingers. So metaphorically, so now you got across the tracks. There's someone like Estelle Tally teaches you. Then you got Ray Charles explaining now that you're across the tracks. What notes are you gonna play? And so now we go on and we, we, we, we do that movie. Which we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that it was gonna be like that. It wasn't a studio film. Uh, it was independent. And, uh, you know, doing the, doing the process of the movie was interesting. Of my, you know, background being from Terrell, knowing how to mimic. But I needed to know how to do Rach, do Ray Charles like the young Ray Charles. So I got in touch with Quincy Jones.

• 45:13Jamie Foxx?

  And for all of you young ones out there, uh, listening. Make sure you Google Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. And the reason why you should do that is because they were the building blocks of our music today. Which started in Seattle, Washington, which was interesting. Seattle at that time was, was a big hub for jazz music, jazz musicians. And that's where Ray Charles migrated to running into a young Quincy Jones. Ray Charles actually taught Quincy Jones everything he knows about music. Who was Quincy Jones for the you young ones listening? Quincy Jones was the one who did, I mean, he played, he was the band director for Frank Sinatra. All of those guys, the Rat Pack, all of those guys. He was the bandleader.

• 45:56Jamie Foxx?

  Uh, if you, and when I met Quincy Jones, he talks about that. Yeah, man, shit, man, music, man, these young cats don't know music anymore, man. Shit, they wouldn't, they'd play in the Kia Q if they would, man, shit. Man, when I played baby Frankie, baby, I said, Mr. Jones, who's Frankie? Man, shit, Frank Sinatra, man. Shit, I was young, man, the band, we were playing in Monaco, man. We didn't even have time to rehearse, baby. We're just there playing, waiting on fucking Frank to come in. I said, what do you mean? He says, we, we had to play this show in Monaco. Frank had never met me, knew that I was this young kid who was great with the music. I become the bandleader, we don't get a chance to rehearse.

• 46:37Jamie Foxx?

  Monaco where there's billionaires and millionaires in the audience waiting on this incredible show. And he says, we're just vamping, man, shit. And Frank doesn't even come out on the stage, he comes through the audience, man. Shit, talking and shit. I'm like, man, I'm nervous as hell. And then Frank got up, he said he sung.

• 46:56Jamie Foxx?

  The band was tight. And Frank Sinatra knighted him, like, gave him a ring that was like, you know, pretty significant. If you know what I mean, and if you guys, uh, Google Frank Sinatra, you'll understand what I mean about the Loco So Nostro. And, uh, uh, so here I am now talking to Quincy Jones. And he's telling me about Ray Charles. He says, "Yeah, man, Ray taught me everything, man. Shit, man, he taught me how to dress. We were wearing suit suits, zoot suits and shit, man. He had nice suits, tailor-made." And I said, "Why did he have nice suits?" "Shit, man, he was always around women, man, and women would tell him, man, those zoot suits are ugly." 'Cause he couldn't see, so the women was telling him how to dress.

• 47:38Jamie Foxx?

  And I said, "Well, Mr. Jones, I'm trying to figure out how to do Ray Charles, but I need the young Ray Charles, right?" And he says, "Well, man, shit, let me look." And he gives me a cassette tape. To you young ones out there, a cassette tape back in the day was a way for us to, I'm just messing with her, to, uh, to share music. And I said, "Okay, I got the cassette tape." I had to go rent a truck from, rent a, from a Hertz to rent a car, because there was no cassette players in the cars. So I popped the cassette tape in, and, uh, uh, on the tape was, "Hi, this is Donna Shore from the Donna Shore Show. We have two very wonderful musicians here today, and Mr. Kenny Rogers, and Mr. Ray Charles." And you hear the young Ray, "Hey, you know what, Donna, I'm just so happy to be here,

• 48:22Jamie Foxx?

  uh, so happy to, uh, that you know my music. I mean, this is just great." And it was the young Ray, like, you know, uh, because when I was talking to the older Ray, I didn't want to grab those bad old habits I want to play in young. So I hear Ray talking young on the tape, and then all of a sudden, he's in charge of the, of the interview, and this is, you know, he was just doing his thing, and then all of a sudden, she says, "Talk about the drugs, Ray." And then he started to stutter. "Ay, ay, well, you know what, ay, ay." So I used that as DNA to play the iconic character, Ray Charles, that when he's talking about his music, he's fully in control. When he's confronted with real-life things, "Why are you doing drugs? Why don't you take care of your family? Why are you cheating on your wife?" He would stutter.

• 49:06Jamie Foxx?

  And I say this long story to say this. After the success of Ray Charles, after being nominated for, uh, an Oscar, uh, my grandmother got a chance to witness all of that. She got a chance to see...

• 49:22Jamie Foxx?

  The bearing of the fruits of, you know, of her labor for her young kid coming from that racially misunderstood town, which I love and wouldn't change anything in the world when it comes to Taro, Texas. Her saying, get across the tracks. We've now gone across the tracks. We've gone all over the world and then here we are. And think about, think about what's the, what's the odds of a kid who lives in a town, population 12,240 people from Taro to go all the way to Los Angeles, California, meet Puff, meet all these different people and then actually have an opportunity to win an Oscar

• 50:07Jamie Foxx?

  and your grandmother gets a chance to see that. Now, October 23rd, 2004, she passed away, which if you know, the actual awards was 2005 in February. But she got a chance to hang in there and, and you know, and feel it, you know? So it's, you know, my grandmother was just like, you know, the blueprint.

• 50:32Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think of teaching confidence with your own kids? Because you're clearly a very confident guy.

• 50:37Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Tim Ferriss?

  Grandmother was very bold, very strong woman. How do you try to teach that to your kids?

• 50:44Jamie Foxx?

  Well, what you do with your kids is like, with my daughter is that there's the phrase that when you see Annalise, my daughter and my oldest daughter, Corinne, I would always ask them, what's on the other side of fear? And they'd be like, huh? I said, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like if I stood in the middle of this floor right there and just yelled, ah, what's on the other side of that? Or if I stood in the middle of the floor and went, huh, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like either you do or you don't, but there's no penalty. There's no reward. It's just, you just be yourself. So I taught them, what's on the other side of fear? Nothing. People are nervous for no reason because there's nothing, no one's gonna come out and slap you or beat you up and then you're just nervous. So why even have that?

• 51:29Jamie Foxx?

  And so that's a building block that they can use, not just about the entertainment business, because that's the other thing. You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer or a school teacher or tech guy or whatever, or a girl, whatever it is, there's nothing on the other side of it.

• 51:48Tim Ferriss?

  What's on the other side of fear?

• 51:49Jamie Foxx?

  Nothing.

• 51:50Tim Ferriss?

  I like it.

• 51:50Jamie Foxx?

  So it's like, so why are you, why, when people say, "Well, I'm so nervous," what are you nervous about?

• 51:55Tim Ferriss?

  It reminds me of this quote that I sort of recite to myself, and I'm gonna paraphrase it because I have it written down, but it's from Mark Twain, it says, "I'm an old man who has known a great many troubles, most of which never happened."

• 52:06Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, exactly, because all of it is in our head. When we talk about fear, or lack of being aggressive, or whatever, it's just, it's, it's, it's in your head. So, not everybody's gonna be super aggressive, but the one thing that you can deal with is a person's fears. So if you start early, if they are a shy person, they just won't be as shy if you keep instilling those things, so.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  The mimicry, the impersonation.

• 52:32Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Tim Ferriss?

  How early did that start? Because I read, and, and maybe you can tell me if this is off or not, because you never know with the internet, that your second grade teacher used to reward the class if they behaved by letting you tell jokes?

• 52:47Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, they would, they would let me tell jokes, because I would get in trouble. Ms. Reeves, my, I think it was my third grade teacher, Ms. Reeves. Because I would like talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school, I was, I lived in a school, so I, I'd already knew the, the, the, from like first to eighth grade, I already knew all of the lesson plan. So, you know, a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, I'm gonna get in trouble. So she would, uh, let me do stand-up comedy on Fridays for the kids. And all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson, and the only room that had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson too as a kid. So, nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old, I would just take the jokes that were being told by, uh, David Brenner,

• 53:30Jamie Foxx?

  and Steve Allen, and a young David Letterman, uh, uh, who else would be on there? Franklin Ajay. You guys, when you, when you're hearing this, you go Google these guys. Uh, a young Jay Leno.

• 53:47Jamie Foxx?

  These were like, sort of like, uh, you know, Richard Pryor. So I would take those jokes and tell them at school, because those kids wouldn't watch it.

• 53:54Tim Ferriss?

  Please tell me he used Richard Pryor on Fridays. Well, I guess it was on primetime, so it wasn't Richard Pryor.

• 53:58Jamie Foxx?

  Richard Pryor on primetime, you couldn't, you couldn't, he couldn't really say anything on primetime, he was clean. But like, uh, uh, uh, Rich Little.

• 54:07Jamie Foxx?

  And Google Rich Little because Rich Little was the first person that I saw do impersonations. So there was a, there was, this was, this had to be, this had to be like seventy-six, nineteen seventy-six. So like fifth grade for me. The joke was, uh, Jimmy Carter, which was the president at the time, singing You Light Up My Life. And at that time, his brother was getting caught drunk all the time, like Billy. Uh, so it was Jimmy Carter goes, uh, so many nights, uh, me and my brother Billy, uh, would sit by the window, waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at an impersonation.

• 54:50Jamie Foxx?

  And then it went on from there to do Richard Nixon, I am not a crook. So, you know, uh, who else would I do? Reagan. Uh, that came later. But, but here's it, Reagan came later, but Reagan came like in the eighties when I was actually like twenty-one. And I was the first black guy, uh, doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one. So I would be, uh, on stage doing my impersonations and going to Ronald Reagan, people are like, no, it ain't no way. Well, well, as a matter of fact, I, uh, well, uh, oh, no, there you go again. And so that, that being, being young and, and, and that teacher, Ms. Reeves and Ms., Ms. Dowthett and all those teachers allowed, Ms. Cole allowed me to be myself.

• 55:32Jamie Foxx?

  Um, you know, helped me hone in on what I was gonna be doing for the rest of my life. Like, like literally my friends from Tarrell go like, how the fuck did you do that? This is the shit you used to do. You turned your third grade act. It was literally the same shit. I'd be like, wow, millions of people are watching this shit and it's the same, it's the same thing. And then, then, you know, as people came.

• 55:58Jamie Foxx?

  Uh, came up, you know, the, the impersonation, you know, like, now Cosby is back in. To do the Cosby impersonation is back in. Don't know how I'm gonna do it, but there's definitely a Cosby joke somewhere. I don't know where it, but I, I, I used to do Cosby. Because of the people and the jello pudding and the, and the filth and the flying and the farm, which Eddie Murphy did, but people didn't know, like, Cosby's real speaking voice is not like that. What's the speaking voice like? His speaking voice was different, because I remember I got in trouble with Mr. Cosby. Because, uh, he felt that the, the, the movie Booty Call was not cool. And he said some things in the press about us, and I was like a young comedian, like, damn, man, I'm just trying to work, you know?

• 56:42Jamie Foxx?

  But, but his speaking voice, when he was on the phone, well, see, the thing is, is that when you do something like Booty Call, what is a booty call? See, why are you calling the booty, you know, whatever? But it was so, it wasn't the, it was because, and then you find out that that was your stick. Yeah, yeah. Because and kid and the child and the people and the farm, but, you know? So I know that that will, that will come up. I, I'll, I'll find a joke for, for Cosby that, of course, is gonna be a little, uh, people are gonna be like, uh, but it's gonna be funny as shit. Uh, and now, who, who's now, uh, Doc Rivers from, uh, the Clippers. Hey, you know, we're gonna try. You know, it's not Blake's fault.

• 57:26Jamie Foxx?

  You know, next year we gotta, we gotta do better, you know, it's. So I'm working on, like, the new impersonations now. Uh, and so that's, and the way you do an impersonation is usually about, it's, it's, it's musical. Like, um, say Kermit the Frog, right? So Kermit the Frog is.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Heh.

• 57:44Jamie Foxx?

  So it's sort of like the way you do your.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  Heh, heh, heh.

• 57:48Jamie Foxx?

  You know what I'm saying? It's, it's finding.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  Heh, heh, heh, heh.

• 57:51Jamie Foxx?

  Right, so?

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Heh.

• 57:55Jamie Foxx?

  So the actual voice tone is in the key of G for Kermit the Frog. Eh eh Kermit

• 58:05Jamie Foxx?

  Kermit the Frog here here with the sesame tree. So that's and then, once you get the voice tone, it's how you make it's how you manipulate your your your mouth to get the sound. Because you know it's eh eh eh eh eh. So it's it's sort of constricting. And then and then and then it's and then it's asking the character to come sit with you. Eh Kermit the Frog here here with the uh three little pig. So you know it's but the key is this. And at the same time, Kermit the Frog, who else sounds like that? Sammy Davis Jr. A little bit. Eh because you know, man. So now Kermit the Frog is is one way, but if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right and grab some swag, now you're Sammy Davis Jr.

• 58:48Jamie Foxx?

  Eh Kermit the Frog because man, you know, it's the same voice, you know. So that's that's sort of like the mechanical way of of getting to the impression.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  So you would start with not the visual, because obviously those people who are listening can't see this, but the mannerisms are also very much on point.

• 59:06Jamie Foxx?

  Mannerisms are are important because like uh uh like I I I do a LeBron James impersonation, which is really not a a a a a uh a voice, it's more of his mannerism, it's the jaw. You know, it's the look. Let's go, bro. You know, and the scuro, you know, the game of basketball, you know, we just try to, you know, you know, it's that, you know. You know, it's right, it's right after, it's right after playing, you know, when it comes off the off the the court, they catching me still tie, you know, uh, you know, the game of basketball, we just try to you know, do the best, you know, so it's the the mannerism, so people will appreciate the mannerisms.

• 59:41Tim Ferriss?

  Physicality.

• 59:41Jamie Foxx?

  The physicality of of someone like uh uh LeBron or, you know, different you know, like I said, different different personalities bring rap bring about different things.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  When you look back on what uh what Ray said to you, if you can play the blues, you can do anything. If you had to translate that for your own kids, let's just say, if you can do X, fill in the blank, you can do anything, what would you put in that blank?

• 1:00:08Jamie Foxx?

  I I would say this. It's it's a couple of things when you have kids who grow up around Hollywood. If you can stay motivated.

• 1:00:20Jamie Foxx?

  And if you can not do some things, not be jaded, not be entitled, not be spoiled, not do drugs, not get into all the bad stuff, because it's, you know, our kids live in an elevated space. So what I try to do, and Ricardo sees this all, Ricardo sees this all the time, so does Justine, we don't play around when it comes to discipline as well. Like, when the kids are here and all of our friends, the size of the house means nothing to, if you don't do the right thing, you're gonna get in major trouble and you're gonna get in Texas trouble. You know what I'm saying? Like, how my grandmother disciplined.

• 1:01:02Jamie Foxx?

  So, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a different thing when it comes to kids that are, live in a privileged situation. Luckily, my daughters are very, very, especially my oldest daughter. My oldest daughter never even asked me for money. Never asked for the new car, never asked for a plane, to ride coach, I mean, you know, so, I think she really, really has a, a great head on her shoulders. I remember I got this Rolls Royce, and I went to go pick my daughter up in the Rolls Royce, thinking that's gonna be, you know, I'll pick her up in the Rolls Royce, drop the top. Drop it! What up, doc? So I'm riding, go to pick her up at school, she won't get in the car. I said, "Baby, what, what, what you doing? Look at the top, it comes up." She says, "Dad, I'm not getting in the car."

• 1:01:46Jamie Foxx?

  Calls her mom, says, "Could you come pick me up?" I said, "What you doing?" She said, "I'm not getting, you goofy. You make me, you make me look stupid in front of my friends." I was like, "Oh." You know, she's really, and that's something she has on the inside. My youngest daughter is a little different. She wants to ride in the, in the Rolls Royce all the time. Daddy, let's take this car. We riding down Sunset Boulevard, she playing Rihanna, you know what I'm saying, with her shades on. So she's a little different in, in, in that sense. And I remember telling her, I said, "Well, well, well, Annalise, we can't ride around in L.A. in the, in the limo, in the, in the Rolls Royce with the top down. You know, we're on our way to the Soho House, and it's sort of finicky up there. So I gotta at least put the top up." She's like, "Why?"

• 1:02:28Jamie Foxx?

  I said, "Just, I said, "Listen, let me ride until I get to Soho House, and then I'll put the top up as we get there." "Okay." So we ride up in the Soho House. We're in the valet, and all of these, you know, celebs and people are coming out. And she yells out, Jamie Foxx in the house. And I'm like, hell no. So I'm trying to pull the top down. All of the other celebrities like, look at this motherfucker being arrogant and shit. He's so gaudy, this motherfucker. And he's got a kid announcing him. So, so you know, it's a lot of things you could tell your kids, man. And then you just have to hope for the best and be there.

• 1:03:04Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, what is your birth name?

• 1:03:07Jamie Foxx?

  Eric Marlon Bishop.

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  And how did Eric Marlon Bishop become Jamie Foxx?

• 1:03:13Jamie Foxx?

  Man, I was Eric Marlon Bishop. Graduated high school, eighty-six. I get out to California and I started doing, you know, I'm in college and, and, um, doing the music. But I would go up on these open mic nights for comedy. So I go, I do really well. Did, I get like standing ovation. And then I came to LA, got a standing ovation. And then when I came back every week, I wouldn't get called up. I was like, man, what, why can't, what's going on? But what I noticed was-

• 1:03:46Tim Ferriss?

  And is the, how does the open mic work?

• 1:03:48Jamie Foxx?

  Well, here's the deal. What you do is you put your name on the list, put your name on the list and they pick from the list and they say, okay, these are people that are going up. So I went up, had a great set then for the next three, four weeks. I didn't, they never called my name. I said, yo, money, did you see my name? Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You were on the list, but we, we got other people. But I found out that the comedians were actually running the list. So the comedians that had been here for a while, I was like, we, we don't want him on here because he's showing us up. So I was like, fuck. So I ended up going to this evening at the improv, the improv like in Santa Monica. And so I had never been there. So I wouldn't notice that a hundred guys would show up, five girls would show up. The five girls would always get on the, on the show because they needed to break up the monotony.

• 1:04:34Jamie Foxx?

  So I said, hmm, I got some. So I wrote down on the list, all of these unisex names. Stacy Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Foxx. And now the guy chooses from the list. He says, uh, is Jamie Foxx, is she here? She'll be first. I was like, no, money, that's, that's me. Ah, okay, all right, well, you're gonna, you're the fresh meat. I said, what's that? They were shooting Evening at the Improv, this old, old comedy show back in the day. Said, you'll be the guy that will just throw up to see if you get a laugh or two. You know, it's gonna be a tough crowd.

• 1:05:09Tim Ferriss?

  Fresh meat.

• 1:05:09Jamie Foxx?

  Fresh meat. I said, cool. So I go up in between two of the guys, get a standing ovation. People like, who's the kid? Is he on the show? I said, no, he's, Fresh Meat's amateur. So then they started yelling my name. Yo, Jamie. Yo, Jamie. Hey, Jamie. But I'm not used to the name. So now they think I'm arrogant. This motherfucker thinks he's, she's not even listening to us. So I, I, I took that name and it stuck. And then I started building everything out off of it. Uh, back in the day, people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had Sly Azay, dot, dot, dot. Uh, coming to the Foxhole, Foxhole, you know, things like that. I'm gonna grab a little something to eat.

• 1:05:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure thing. Okay, we are back after a little food break.

• 1:05:55Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, we talked about some of your comedy, starting in third grade, maybe earlier. We talked about, uh, grandmother. And what I like to talk about a little bit more is fear. So you mentioned on the other side of fear. By the time you got to doing the open mics, getting up on stage, were you nervous? Were you afraid or were you over it?

• 1:06:18Jamie Foxx?

  Nah, because first I looked at it first. Like I, I went to an open mic night and saw the guys, I'm like, man, these dudes is terrible.

• 1:06:27Jamie Foxx?

  And so when you go on stage and your whole life is not, I wanna be a comedian. I went on stage like, yo, I'm just fuck around. So if I hit, cool. If I miss, I wasn't trying to be that anyway. You know, I wanted to do more music, but, but when I went on stage, it was just like, it was, it was just natural. It was, uh, you know, I belong here. So I think that's the thing too, when it comes to entertainment. Uh, there's a certain like, oh, I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do. How successful I will be or won't be, that's something out of my hands, but I do know that this is where I belong. And that's with anything and anybody, like when you can, when you can sort of listen to that

• 1:07:12Jamie Foxx?

  voice in your head or what's in your heart and you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do. That alleviates a lot of the fear. Now, if it was surgeon or lawyer or something, you know, something, you know, if something that I'm not, you know, versed in or something like that, then maybe there would be more fear, but with this, you don't have, or I don't have those types of fears. And, and as I've gotten older in the business, I've sort of simplified things. Like now I just execute. I have to ask people like Ricardo, Justin, Justin, what should I execute? So the fear of a celebrity or, or, or an artist now is how do I get my art off?

• 1:07:57Jamie Foxx?

  In a world where it's, uh, uh, the, the, the social media driven sort of, uh,

• 1:08:07Jamie Foxx?

  uh, ridicule and criticism. Like I always say like this, like a person like Prince or a person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world. Because in the, in the day of the internet and where everybody has a voice, most of the voices are hateful voices or not understanding. Like, like if you saw Prince with, uh, um, a guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed, you know, people would meme the shit out of it, you know? So now it's a, uh, it's, it's not a fear, but it's just a. A question that I have to always ask them like, yo, is this, is this the cool shit to do or not the cool shit to do? And so, what I learned is when it's just executing something,

• 1:08:52Jamie Foxx?

  when it's either executing a song, or executing a joke, or executing things within, within entertainment, it's cool. But then you have to wonder like, how do you get it off? Like, how do you, like even now, when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke, back in the day, we just tell the joke. Now you gotta be like, okay, I gotta tell the joke in a way that is still funny, it still keeps the bite on it, but you know, so those are the different like, for me as a entertainer, where there's not fear, it's just like, you know, questions. Does that make sense?

• 1:09:27Tim Ferriss?

  Makes sense. No, this makes sense. The considerations. When you, when you, uh, have you bombed on stage before?

• 1:09:34Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, what's, what's, two things. What do you, when you are bombing,

• 1:09:39Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Tim Ferriss?

  what is your internal dialogue or response? And then secondly-

• 1:09:43Jamie Foxx?

  Internal dialogue is, boy, you stink. Boy, you bombing.

• 1:09:49Jamie Foxx?

  I bombed, and it wasn't a lot. I only bombed like, twice.

• 1:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  Do you remember your first?

• 1:09:55Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I did this, this show for this guy named Lattimore. Old blues singer. I'm 21.

• 1:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  What was his name?

• 1:10:02Jamie Foxx?

  Lattimore.

• 1:10:03Tim Ferriss?

  Lattimore. Sounds like Voldemort. Yeah, Lattimore.

• 1:10:05Jamie Foxx?

  Lattimore. So, this guy saw me at this other club and said, hey, man, you know, Lattimore is performing around the corner, man, would you come and open him up? I said, whatever. I said, how much you pay? He said, pay fifty dollars. I said, I'm there. Fifty bucks, I need it. So this is like, eighty-nine, ninety. So, I get there, and I don't know who Lattimore is, I just know it was a lot of older people. Like, I mean, like, oh, oh, I'm like, oh shit. Where the people at, these other people? So I go up, and the setting was different. It was like, the chairs and stuff were way in the back, it was like a banquet setting. And it's in the middle of the hood, you know, Crenshaw. And like, the tables were like, from here to where like, twenty feet away, thirty feet away from me. So I don't have it.

• 1:10:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you didn't have that proximity?

• 1:10:51Jamie Foxx?

  And I hadn't been doing stand-up comedy that long. I'd only been doing it for like, a year. So I had, if I'm funny, I got an hour. If I'm not funny, it's about ten minutes worth of shit. Cause I would just take a joke and just keep spinning it and spinning it. So, my first joke, they didn't get. Second joke, they didn't get. I said, shit, I'm there now, all the jokes.

• 1:11:11Jamie Foxx?

  So I said, well, let me do this before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar. Like, oh shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly collar. But before I could say that, I looked around. Everybody has a butterfly collar. This is what they really wanna look like. And so, uh, I just said, hey, man, I, you know, I don't know what else y'all want. And, uh, pretty soon Lattimore is gonna come up. You guys ready for Lattimore? And I just started doing, I said, I'm gonna take a break. So I get offstage and the dude that was washing the dishes takes his apron off and goes, man, I got it. Grab the mic. How y'all feel?

• 1:11:56Jamie Foxx?

  And he started doing these old stock jokes. Kills. And so I said, okay, now I know what it is. You gotta have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned on how to tell jokes for everybody. Because at first, my jokes was geared towards women, it was singing and this, that. So what I started doing from that, from that day on, I would go to like Des Moines, Iowa, Davenport, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, where it's all white. Gunnison, Colorado, all white. And I would go do like forty minutes of all black material to see what they understood, what they didn't understand. So if I go to these all white places and if they understood fifteen minutes, I logged that fifteen minutes.

• 1:12:40Jamie Foxx?

  I can go to any place where it's just all white.

• 1:12:43Tim Ferriss?

  And, and you would determine if they understood it by the laughs?

• 1:12:45Jamie Foxx?

  Huh?

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  You would, if, you would determine if they understood it by the laughs?

• 1:12:49Jamie Foxx?

  By, by, and I would ask, y'all know who this is? Uh, and so I would tell the joke. If fifteen minutes, they understood it, I can go to any place in the world that's all white and they get it. Then I would go to my chocolate cities, Chicago, DC, uh, Florida, and do all of my, uh, political highbrow stuff and see what the, see, see what the black folks understood. Man, what the fuck you doing, my doc? Now they understood fifteen minutes. Now I got fifteen to thirty minutes or forty-five minutes that wherever I go, no matter what age, they'll understand. No matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand this forty-five minutes. So I had to learn how to use the formula in order for you to be funny. And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people.

• 1:13:36Jamie Foxx?

  In the highest way, like in the, like if you look at a,

• 1:13:41Jamie Foxx?

  like if you look at the arc of a Kevin Hart, like Kevin Hart, takes that arc, takes the same formula. I'm not for sure how he put it in his, in his, in his mind, but he's doing the same thing to where he's going to all of these places, all over the world, implementing his comedy, and if they get it, he's, he's gathering all of that so that now, when people see Kevin Hart, no matter where in the world, they're gonna laugh. You know, so it's the, the, you know, becoming a great comedian is also having that formula going on in your head because if you, if you paint yourself into a corner, like you're only the black comedian, or you're only the Hispanic comedian, or whatever that is, then it's hard for you to become universal. I mean Eddie was,

• 1:14:25Jamie Foxx?

  Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity through Saturday Night Live to get it to everybody. But uh, uh, it's definitely a, a formula to not bomb it.

• 1:14:34Tim Ferriss?

  So, what would you say to yourself? So that was the first bomb. You mentioned two.

• 1:14:39Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Tim Ferriss?

  What was the second?

• 1:14:40Jamie Foxx?

  The second was...

• 1:14:41Tim Ferriss?

  And if, if it's too, if it's hard to recall, the, the, the follow-up question is gonna be, what is the post-game analysis when you step off the stage after bombing, say the second time?

• 1:14:52Jamie Foxx?

  Well, you gotta, when I bombed the second time, was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes. But I don't like to work out jokes and tell people I'm working out. I like to actually do a show, come and do the show.

• 1:15:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:15:05Jamie Foxx?

  So we're in, uh, I think it was Irvine-

• 1:15:07Tim Ferriss?

  So you don't tell people you're working on-

• 1:15:08Jamie Foxx?

  No, no, no. I think, I think that's cheating, and I think you, you get bad habits. So I, I do a show in Irvine, California. First show I killed. They was just ready for him. I'm like, oh man, everything worked. Second show,

• 1:15:22Jamie Foxx?

  bombed. Because I didn't take time to dig out the jokes and that. So, but when you bomb, you go like, okay, all right, let's go, let's check it out. So I got a team of my, my guys. I said, let's go. Okay, that didn't work. No, you gotta put this in front of that. You gotta put that behind this, cause that's gonna kick this off. People didn't know what that was, so maybe we don't say that. So you know, you have to- When you take the bomb, when we take the L, it's not like you're not funny. What's the L? Like you take the loss. Oh, okay. When you take the loss, it's not like you're not funny. It's just like, okay, you just didn't put the shit together. So that's the other thing, too. When you do become funny, it's gonna be harder now to make people laugh because you set the bar. High water. Yeah, so now, so watch this.

• 1:16:06Jamie Foxx?

  The hardest part for Chris Rock was after he had done something great in stand-up. Because now, you gotta top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy, because Eddie wants to come out and do stand-up, is how do I top that in your head? The hardest part is coming for Kevin Hart in the fact that you sm- you smashed him. Now, you gotta, you gotta, you know what I'm saying? You gotta know how to, you gotta know how to refresh. Because when you do something like, like I, I would look at my stuff and go like, I gotta quit doing that. Because that shtick that I'm doing, people are catching on.

• 1:16:50Jamie Foxx?

  And they're like, okay, motherfucker, we've already seen that shit. So that, that's the other thing. You gotta have great material. And you gotta have, you gotta know, you gotta know how to move. Because like, right now, is the perfect time for Eddie Murphy to come out and do stand-up. Because it's been so long, it's nostalgic, it was thirty years ago. So now, you can catch a new, young, uh, you can still excite the older, you know what I'm saying? So being a stand-up comedian is tough. And you've seen a lot of funny guys not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at a Jim Carrey, you go like, okay, man, where you at? Where you at? You know what I'm saying? You know, don't, don't give up the funny. Or, or you look at Chris, I always look at Chris Tuck and be like, motherfucker, where you at? Don't, don't lea- don't leave us. Because...

• 1:17:35Jamie Foxx?

  Being a stand-up comedian is an interesting thing. Most stand-up comedians wanna look good. In what way? We just wanna look good. Think about this, when Eddie Murphy started doing stand-up, he was funny, but then he started doing, you know, to wear the leather suits and it was a fly shit and the rings and they didn't wanna look good. Joe Piscopo started working out with the muscles, you know what I'm saying? So, as a stand-up comedian, we gotta be careful not to look too good because people start going, "What the fuck are you doing? You ain't cute, nigga." We just wanna laugh, you know what I'm saying? But when we started, you know, we started getting into our shit, that's when we looked, because I did that. Like, like, I got to, uh, my thing was that after In Living Color,

• 1:18:20Jamie Foxx?

  the show called In Living Color that I did, I, I felt like I had made it. So, I wasn't necessarily on the good-looking shit, but I was on the "I've made it" jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes. Just got that Range Rover. Anybody else? It's crazy out here, you know, they're so finicky, right? Motherfuckers are looking at me like, "What the fuck is you talking about?" And then, uh, I'll tell them, "You know, the square footage of the house, man, when they get a certain square feet, man, that shit is crazy and maintaining, you know?" Motherfuckers are like, "Motherfucker, if you don't get off the goddamn stage." I'd lost it. Right. I lost it, and I walked offstage and all of a sudden, I, I walk offstage, they're giving it to Jamie Foxx, and I'm thinking, "They're going crazy." "Yeah, yeah, oh, thank you, thank you so much." And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy.

• 1:19:04Jamie Foxx?

  I'm like, "What the fuck they doing? I just went on stage, what the fuck are they laughing at?" And I opened the door and there was a kid, skinny, little tank top on, barely fit. His name was Chris Tucker. He was smashing, he was... No one has been that funny within fifteen minutes. I've never seen, I've never seen, and I watch them all, I've never seen a stand-up where people were laughing so hard, like, I said, "He's gonna kill somebody." Like, when he says, "Last night, how was your...?" "Oh, I killed." It's gonna be true, somebody gonna have a fucking heart attack. And I sat down and said, and I went, "I can't do that." I lost that.

• 1:19:44Jamie Foxx?

  So I left, went to another club, that night bombed, like it wasn't, you know. So finally, I went over to Okinawa where the troops were. I started doing stand up over there for the troops to sort of get back. It was my Rocky moment, like, you know, I started running up the steps, chasing chickens and shit. Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam, trying to get back. And for a stand up comedian, that's the one thing you can never let go. You can never stop being, excuse me, a certain goofiness to you. And so, and like when you talk about fear, or when you talk about bombing, it's, uh, it's different when you, when you, when you've done it for a long time, you know? And when you do bomb, you just gotta get right back up and you gotta acknowledge it. Okay, I stunk, nigga. Cause they're gonna let you know.

• 1:20:26Jamie Foxx?

  Like today's world, you can't do nothing in today's world without somebody letting you know, like, oh nigga, you fucked that up.

• 1:20:34Tim Ferriss?

  What are the sources or where do most of your best bits come from? When you look back at the stuff that just killed, is it the shower? The thing that bugs you three times, so you write it down? I mean, how do you develop your material?

• 1:20:47Jamie Foxx?

  It was observation and like, you know, I do jokes with them, you know? It's just sort of like observation. You know, early on, it was the black and white thing, you know? Black folks do it this way, white folks do it, which was the way we were doing comedy in, in, in the eight, late eighties and nineties. Oh, the average white man's heart, it has, no, it has to do with the heart. The average white man's heart beats like this. Or the average black man's heart beats like this. You know, ladies, that's why you have a choice. Would you rather make love to somebody like this? Or would you rather make love to somebody like this? I mean, that was the jokes, you know, at the time. So it was observational.

• 1:21:30Jamie Foxx?

  And then it was personal, like you do your observation first and then it was personal. My grandmother, who was, um, you know, we lived together, you know? And when she first heard like on television what AIDS was, being old, she didn't know what it exactly meant. She just knew it was bad, but she thought that since she's always on me anyway, that I'm gonna catch AIDS. But it was for the wrong reasons. Like she would say, boy, you gonna, it's six in the morning. You gonna wake up, shit, half the day done gone. I said, Granny, what you mean, is it six? Shit, I'm there sleeping. Anybody sleep that long got to have AIDS. I said, Granny, I don't think that's how. No, I saw it on TV. You sleep it too long, you got AIDS.

• 1:22:13Jamie Foxx?

  I said, Granny, I don't think that's how they exactly. And then like I would use her towels, like, you know, you know, you know, old southern women had them. There was a towel used and it was a nice towel, so I used a nice towel. Boy, I know you ain't use my towels. I said, you gonna put the AIDS on the towel. You ain't use everybody's towel. Anybody use a towel like that got to have AIDS. I said, Granny, I don't think that's how, you know, so. It was opposite, now this is what she was actually saying. So when I did that joke on stage, people was just, you know, would die. So it's observational, then it's personal. And then some of the comedians are great politically. I'm not necessarily a political guy. My thing was the impersonation of the politician, like Bill Clinton.

• 1:22:57Jamie Foxx?

  You know, I did not have sex with that woman. You know, it was, you know, things like that, but uh, oh. It's so many different ways and so many different guys out there that you, that, that you look at and go, ooh. Like when I would look at a young Chris Rock, the way he was a technician, just me. Or you look at Jay Leno, or you look at even Arsenio Hall when he would work out. Or you see Eddie working out a joke.

• 1:23:24Jamie Foxx?

  You know, it's, they are, or, or watching George Lopez, who knows how to tap into the bass and just really bring you into his world and stuff. So it's some, it's some, uh, some guys that Sarah Silverman.

• 1:23:39Jamie Foxx?

  Just, I mean, a technician. Amy Schumer, watching her on just a Saturday Night Live when she's, you know, working her shit out. A young Whoopi Goldberg at the Met. There's so many people that you can watch and see how to, how to, you know, tap into your own skill set, you know, but uh, I try to look at all of them and try to just, you know, not steal from it, but just get inspired by it all.

• 1:24:05Tim Ferriss?

  Who are some of the most underrated comedians who come to mind? Or people who you'd think haven't had their due, haven't been appreciated?

• 1:24:12Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, I wouldn't say underrated, but I, I, I think there were just, there were just like warriors that never got that shine. Uh, there was a guy named TK Kirkland, who was a warrior. But he never got to shine and TK had a colorful past, you know? And he'll let you know, he said, you know, he was a crazy motherfucker, but TK had jokes like, "And why does Kermit the Frog always say, 'Hi-ho, hi-ho'?" "Is he a pimp?" "And why..."

• 1:24:40Jamie Foxx?

  "And why do fat people wearing leather pants, do they think that shit is cute?" "And why do people in wheelchairs tie they motherfucking shoes, do they think they gonna trip?" Oh, man, it was just... He was just amazing. And his delivery, you know what I'm saying? He say, uh, he says, "'Cause I'm T to the motherfucking K, that's the type of motherfucker I am." "Don't play me, play Lotto, you got a better chance." And he's, he, he played, he, he made, he made, he made himself a character onstage. That was just... You know, you guys are too young to, to, to know this joke, but Bugle Boy Jeans?

• 1:25:20Jamie Foxx?

  Bugle Boy Jeans used to have a commercial where a girl would pull up in a car and says, "Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy..." She would say this to a guy, like he's walking on the street with his jeans, he says, "Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?" "Why, yes, they are." And she'd get in the car. TK had a joke, man, that was so funny, he said, "Man, let, man, let that motherfucker be a motherfucking black girl in the motherfucking car." "Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?" "Yeah." "Get in the car, motherf..." I mean, people would just go... The dude had so many, like, levels. And, uh, he just, you know, he's, he's an underground guy. Uh, who else?

• 1:26:06Jamie Foxx?

  There was a lot, I mean, a lot of people. Earthquake, amazing. Uh, uh, Earthquake is amazing. Uh, what's my other dude's name? Tony Roberts, amazing. Tony Roberts, man, I've never laughed. So, he says, uh, he said, uh, oh, man, I, I had to dig out some of his jokes. But he talks about, uh, it's very physical, but he talks about being on a plane and the plane is going down. And he says, he said, he was on a plane and he thought the plane was going down. So he says, so I wanted to fuck everybody before, you know, I wanted to fuck before. He says, oh, while the plane's going down, he's fucking everybody, you know, he fucked, he fucked, uh, he fucked a nun, he was fucking everybody and then the plane leveled off. Oh, I'm sorry, y'all, uh. I'm sorry, my bad.

• 1:26:53Jamie Foxx?

  Just hilarious, man. And there's a, there's so many, man, so many. Not a lot of new comedians now that are actually, uh, it's funny, right? That are actually dangerous now. We don't have dangerous comedians.

• 1:27:06Tim Ferriss?

  We need my dangerous.

• 1:27:08Jamie Foxx?

  The dangerous comedian that we have right now is Amy Schumer. She's dangerous.

• 1:27:12Tim Ferriss?

  In what way?

• 1:27:13Jamie Foxx?

  Like, like she'll, she'll say it, like, it'll be hot button, you know what I mean?

• 1:27:17Tim Ferriss?

  Have you, uh, have you ever heard, uh, I saw this guy on a, actually heard of him through a guy named Evan Goldberg, who's Seth Rogen's writing partner? And, uh, and so Gerard, exactly, that was good. So Gerard Carmichael?

• 1:27:33Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:33Tim Ferriss?

  His special, oh my God. He's like, I would never make a rape joke. This is more of a rape question. And it's like, oh my God.

• 1:27:41Jamie Foxx?

  He's dangerous.

• 1:27:42Tim Ferriss?

  That, that struck me as dangerous.

• 1:27:43Jamie Foxx?

  Well, he's da, and it's not a lot of that anymore. It's not a lot of dangerous comedians. And I think that's where we sort of go like, you know, where's that danger? Like you, when you, when you, when you see Amy Schumer, you see like, I saw her in a room. Talking about catching a dick in front of Robert De Niro, like we're at the American of Film Awards, whatever like that. And she's just, I mean, hardcore danger, which is what Sarah Silverman started out as, you know, so, but Amy looks like she's rounded the corner and is now, you know, really making it, you know, making it dope for herself.

• 1:28:19Tim Ferriss?

  If you look back at, uh, In Living Color, and I, I watched the show, and it just, if in retrospect, it seems like, Such a magical combination of people. So how did that group get assembled? And what made that team so special? Because I mean, you look at the list, right? I mean, you've got Chris Rock, you've got Jim Carrey, you've got the Wayans. You've got, it just goes, Jennifer Lopez, you go down the line. It's just, it's an all-star roster.

• 1:28:51Jamie Foxx?

  Well, at that time, Keenan Ivory Wayans was the, he put it all together. And he was able to grab all of these incredibly talented people. And make them get along. And figure out how to squeeze all of this talent into 22 minutes of programming.

• 1:29:10Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:29:10Jamie Foxx?

  Because it was only, it was a 30-minute show, so it was 22 minutes. But he was very disciplined in how we make jokes. You were not allowed to come in and be half-assed. He'd pull you to the side and say, as a black comedian, you cannot be half-assed. You're either great, or you don't exist. So, and he says, don't take the racial part of that any kind of way. That's just the way it is. Because he wrote for Eddie Murphy. He was around the greatest. He says, I'm around the greatest all the time, so that's what we gonna do. So when you see Damon Wayans come in, and I had just got hired, like, they had already been doing the show for like a year or two years.

• 1:29:53Jamie Foxx?

  So when I saw Damon walk in and Jim walk in, it was like, it was like fucking Jurassic Park. So fucking, it was like fucking T-Rex and fuck, you know what I'm saying? And the way I got on the show was crazy too, because it went from the auditioning process, it was 100 comedians, down to 50, down to 25, down to 10, down to 5. I was part of the 5, but I was losing. I wasn't doing well within the improv of it. Because I just wasn't catching catching the right shit. And then Keenan says something incredible. He says, "Well, I dig this, but I want to see y'all on stage doing stand up. Because I want to have stand up comedians." I was like, "Oh shit, that's my shit. That's my shit."

• 1:30:36Jamie Foxx?

  And the other four people didn't do stand up. There was only one other girl that did stand up. God bless her, Yvette Wilson. But the other three didn't do stand up. So I was like, "Oh, man." So that night, everybody's going to the Laugh Factory, which was just starting. Because at that time, the Comedy Store was dominating. Laugh Factory was just, and they begged, "Can we please have the audition in the Laugh Factory?" So I show up late on purpose. Because I wanted to be last. Ah, smart. So I show up late and Tamara Rawitt, who was the producer, and they're, "What are you doing? You're late. Oh my god. Why aren't you here? We're supposed to go on up early. You're supposed to be first, Jamie. Oh my god, you're gonna kill me." I said, "Oh damn, well, can I just go up last?"

• 1:31:18Jamie Foxx?

  "Yes, you have to. Because we've already started. Get in here, you..." Whatever.

• 1:31:24Jamie Foxx?

  So go ahead. Now, this was interesting for me because I was in white world. I was like on the mainstream. I did all my jokes in the hood at that time. You know what I'm saying? I was the hood guy. So, I was like, "Oh shit," you know. Uptown, you know what I'm saying? It's like, everything is clean and shit, you know? Ain't no weed in the air or nothing, you know what I'm saying? Ain't nobody snuck no drinks in and shit. And it's an audition thing. So I'm watching the guys, and you know, God bless them, they just had never done stand up before. So I had my cassette tape, and I knew what I was coming up to. I'm coming up to Heavy D's in Effect with more bounce to the ounce. So I get a dude my tape. He's like, "What's this?" "That's my tape." You know, going with music. You know, up there, they didn't go on with music. They just went up and hand clapped. I said, "No, man, I gotta,

• 1:32:07Jamie Foxx?

  I gotta come in with Heavy D's in Effect with more bounce to the pumps. I need the crowd going." "It's okay, sure." So he's standing there with the tape. And then Sean Wayans gave me a great tip. He walked up, he said, "Yo, Jamie, just go up and do your act, man. Just stop worrying about, don't worry about the characters. Just do your act. Yo, Marlon, Marlon, come here. Tell Jamie, just do your act." I said, "Oh, really? Just do my act? Do my act like I do in the hood?" "Yeah, do your act like you do in the hood." I said, "Straight? Cool." So I go up. They don't play the music. I'm waiting on them. I'm like, "Yo, you got my music?" The dude is over there like this.

• 1:32:42Jamie Foxx?

  I said, "Well, I'm supposed to have some music." And I said, "If this shit goes wrong, you will actually see me working across the street at the gas station." And I went into a character. "Man, I was in there with Keenan and all of them, dawg." And it just, so I did this little character and then I went into my act. And I got a stand ovation that night. And I remember seeing Jim Carrey and Keenan, Flygirl was like on their feet. Like, I said, "Oh, man, this is great." And that's how I got on the show. And during that show, I did this character called Wanda. Where I said, "All the good-looking ladies clap your hands."

• 1:33:20Jamie Foxx?

  I said, "Now, all the ugly ladies, let me see you make some noise." It was quiet. I said, "Ain't that a bitch?" And then all the ugly ladies, I thought, "Hey, for real, though? He ain't talking about me." So we did this character. Keenan was like, "I want you to do that character on the show, because I think that's where you, you, uh, you really flourish." And when we did that, when I did that character, that's when everything sort of changed. Because I was trying to find my bearings on the show, because we got on the show, but we were there for a trial basis. But when I did that character, it was like, it was like, it was like playing football and I was like the punt returner. And I was a rookie and I ran it all the way back the first day. Uh, so nobody really knew who I was, but they knew that this character was, was, was slamming. And so that sort of gave me like my stripes,

• 1:34:04Jamie Foxx?

  because, uh, these guys were juggernauts. I watched, I watched Keenan. I said, "Keenan, these jokes ain't funny, just the writers, that the writers wrote." He says, "Get on your feet. Everybody get up. Let's do this." So he was like, "There's never a joke that's not funny. You just gotta work and find it." So he taught us the formula of finding the jokes and he was right every single time. And so, uh, like I said, to be there watching Jim Carrey, like, create Pet Detective on set.

• 1:34:32Jamie Foxx?

  He's writing Pet Detective, as a way. I said, "What's that you're writing on?" "Hey, man, just, uh, you know, working on some stuff. You know, just got some stuff I'm working on." "So what is that?" "Man, it's a little thing called Pet Detective." I said, "Okay, sound funny."

• 1:34:44Tim Ferriss?

  And was he developing it for the show at that time?

• 1:34:45Jamie Foxx?

  No, he was developing for...

• 1:34:46Tim Ferriss?

  For much later?

• 1:34:47Jamie Foxx?

  For his own shit. I gotta make one phone call.

• 1:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  No problem. All right, so we're back. We took a little, took a little breather. But, uh, what were we, catch us up. What were we just talking about?

• 1:34:57Jamie Foxx?

  We were talking about how nowadays is that you don't get a chance to control your own narrative. Like, we were talking about is, there's two different people. Some people think that the tech world and the, and social media and things on the internet is taking us to a great place. And then there's people who think that it's a horrible place. I had, I spoke with a, um, a young lady who had been burned bad, bad by the press. Bad to where she lost her job. And what was interesting about her job was that what they were scolding her about was, like, me knowing her, I was like, "You're not like that at all." She says, "I can't, there's nothing I can do. Everybody thinks so." And they took something like, they went through emails and through her personal emails

• 1:35:41Jamie Foxx?

  and all of a sudden, what it was, but it was just like, "You're not like that at all." So, when I was on the phone talking about it, she was like, "They're saying this and that." "Ah, don't worry about it, you're, you're cool. Like, you're not like that, I don't give a fuck." But I hadn't, I'm bowling, I'm like, I don't, I don't even, I don't even need to read it. What could they possibly say? And when I looked, it was a national story. I went, "What the fuck?" She lost her job.

• 1:36:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:04Jamie Foxx?

  And so like even, like, you'll do something where you think that it's, either you're making fun or you're having fun, you know? But they'll take whatever it is that you say

• 1:36:17Jamie Foxx?

  and make it what they wanted to say.

• 1:36:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Jamie Foxx?

  Or craft it where, like, if you do a joke, it's not about being a joker anymore. Jamie Foxx slams Caitlyn Jenner. Jamie Foxx trounces, like, nah, I'm a comedian, we do, do... But everything is something that they control. And, and it, it's tough because... When I say Justin Bieber, what do you think? What's the first thing comes to mind? Be honest.

• 1:36:43Tim Ferriss?

  Hair that I'm jealous of.

• 1:36:45Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, but what do you think? But what do you think? Something about a kid who's can't get it together. When I say Chris Brown, what do you think? It's something negative. When I say Jennifer Aniston, what do you think?

• 1:36:54Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think? Cover of Rolling Stone photograph, black and white.

• 1:36:57Jamie Foxx?

  Brad Pitt. You think what?

• 1:36:59Tim Ferriss?

  Cover of Rolling Stone magazine, black and white, naked, laying on a bed.

• 1:37:01Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, that's hilarious. Well, the average person would think of not what they do.

• 1:37:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right, but the impression.

• 1:37:09Jamie Foxx?

  What the headline is.

• 1:37:09Tim Ferriss?

  The subliminal image they got at the checkout counter.

• 1:37:11Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, it's the headline. If I say Jennifer Aniston, you automatically think, because nowadays, they control, we don't control our own narrative to where it's like, they talked about this thing with Quentin Tarantino, which I thought was sad, because usually, when you see a story about Black Lives Matter or anything black, it's usually the same black folks with the kufi who's trying to be heard. And they're absolutely right. They're absolutely, it's so much wrong going on in black world. There's black on black crime. Then there's the divide that is, because of social media,

• 1:37:55Jamie Foxx?

  is that is going on between the police officers and black folk. Police officers are, on the whole, are great folk. I know them. I, shit, I know a gang of police officers. But the one or two that have been caught on social media makes it look, paint the picture, that it's all of them. Now granted, we've known for a long time that blacks and police officers have always had a divide. We've done music, we've done movies about it. We've done books about it. It's just, it is the way it is. Now, my take on it is because I call it residue. It's slave residue. Meaning that slavery for 300 years, you saw a person of color a certain way, for 300 years.

• 1:38:41Jamie Foxx?

  You've always saw them as a slave or the criminal or what, something that you didn't value. So therefore, coming out of that, of course, there's gonna be a divide when it comes to police and when it comes to blacks and when it comes, that's always been that way. So, take that off the table.

• 1:38:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:38:56Jamie Foxx?

  But in today's world of how do we bridge that gap? I've gone to Quantico in Virginia, saw what a police officer sees. I've talked to police officers, how can we bridge the gap? I've suggested that you go get a white police officer who you think might not like black folk. You know what I'm saying? Get that person to go into the hood and throw a picnic for a kid that's eight, nine, 10 years old, who's African American, so that he can see another.

• 1:39:27Jamie Foxx?

  Another side.

• 1:39:27Jamie Foxx?

  Another side of the police officer. Because right now, social media or in media period, the stories that are the most salacious, where it's the black person, the black cop being, the black guy being killed by a cop. It's hard to erase those images. I'm a black man. When I see that, I have to react to that. Because I'm like, wow, you know, that troubles me. But then I have to sit down and think, okay, let me not think of the worst thing to say. But let me think, because I know how media tries to make things or heighten it.

• 1:40:03Jamie Foxx?

  Right.

• 1:40:03Jamie Foxx?

  How do I bring people together in spite of the headline? Because what people don't understand is that when you keep showing the images of the black guy being killed by the cop, that does something to you.

• 1:40:19Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:19Jamie Foxx?

  That's like whatever you believe in, if it was a Jewish person, if it was a gay person. You cannot sit and not be bothered by that. At the same time, that cop, when he sees the other side of it, when they're saying, all of you guys ain't shit, which that's not what's really being said. Most of the time, it's with the individual cop. Now, the cop sees the story. In his mind now, well, fuck it, well, it's a problem now. So now, imagine that cop who's watching the story, driving on the street, that young black kid who's watching the story, walking on the street. What happens?

• 1:40:56Jamie Foxx?

  Dynamite.

• 1:40:57Jamie Foxx?

  Dynamite.

• 1:40:59Jamie Foxx?

  Because we can't get it, we can't, we can't get anybody responsible on the media side to say, let's stop interviewing people and putting labels on them. Let's interview this man and this woman, but don't say that they're Democrat, don't say that they're Republican, don't say that they're a cop, just have them talk. Because when you see, when you're watching TV and you see something that you agree with, you agree with them only, and you can't hear the other person. That's the first thing. Two, like when I look at Quentin Tarantino, to demonize this guy.

• 1:41:32Tim Ferriss?

  Can, and just because people might be listening to this for years, could you catch people up on?

• 1:41:36Jamie Foxx?

  Well, let me catch, catch.

• 1:41:36Tim Ferriss?

  The confusion.

• 1:41:37Jamie Foxx?

  Quentin Tarantino, who is a purist when it comes to his opinions and his emotions, even if, even if you could go, I could go to Quentin Tarantino and say something, man, I think, you know, as a black person, and so on, so on, so on. He'd say, well, stop doing that. Stop hanging it just on black. Hanging on things that are substance first, and then let it be. I mean, so I've, I've heard this guy speak when there's no cameras. I said, wow, you know what? You make a lot of sense. So Quentin Tarantino sees the Black Lives Matter campaign, sees the individual stories,

• 1:42:16Jamie Foxx?

  forty different people of individual stories where a police officer had killed the person who was unarmed. It touched him. The reason I thought that was impactful, because you seldom see the white superstar go and stand with the black folk who just trying to be heard. Even high-end black guys don't go stand with the black folks that's trying to be heard. When it comes to like, especially Hollywood, because you know, people in Hollywood are so scared. Oh, they won't see my movie, or they won't go see my song if I stand, if I stand up for anything of substance. They so fucking scared.

• 1:42:59Jamie Foxx?

  So when I saw this dude do that, I was like, wow, that's great. But then, the misinterpretation of his words, where he says, "I'm standing here with the murdered." Quentin Tarantino speaks that way. He speaks.

• 1:43:14Jamie Foxx?

  If you've read any of his movie, or saw any of his movies, he speaks in those terms. He says, "I stand with the murder." When I see someone being murdered, I call it what it is. It's a murder. That's a murderer that killed this person. However, the story got spun was that Quentin Tarantino is a cop hater. He hates all cops, and they're all cops of murderers. And I was just like, "Oh, here we go again, man." Here's a person who's willing, and I'm gonna speak like this, willing to put aside his white cushy Hollywood-ness. He could live on his mountain and never give a shit about anything. He came and said, "Man, I felt something."

• 1:44:01Jamie Foxx?

  And now, they painted so bad, and now you got the New York cop, "So, we got something for his at." Now it's a beef. Now it's, that's not what we trying to do. But you can't do anything right now because the media story, if it's not salacious, we don't want to report it. We have to... You feel what I'm saying?

• 1:44:26Tim Ferriss?

  No, I do. And it's, I mean, if it bleeds, it leads, right? So, they put the salacious, the visually, viscerally impactful stuff up front because it gets the clicks or the purchases, the advertising. The only, I suppose, flip side to that, and I have a very specific question for you that, from a fan, I'd love to ask, related to some of these race questions. But the good news is, if you can look at it in these terms, is that the necessity for new is so high that if you starve a story of oxygen, it'll often die on its own.

• 1:44:59Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Tim Ferriss?

  Because they can't regurgitate the same thing if there's no response.

• 1:45:03Jamie Foxx?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:03Tim Ferriss?

  And so, you can let it kind of die on the vine. But, we were talking about this before. I mean, I've had instances, and I won't bitch and moan too long because I think the question is more interesting than my bitching. But I've had instances where these formerly, I would say...

• 1:45:18Tim Ferriss?

  Outlets of record, you know, very prestigious outlets. Magazines, I'm not going to mention them by name because it's

• 1:45:24Jamie Foxx?

  I know what you're talking about.

• 1:45:25Tim Ferriss?

  But I was interviewed and profiled by a magazine at one point. Very, very highbrow magazine. There were six or seven misquotes or erroneous facts in the piece. And I corrected those with the fact checker and went to press with no corrections. What do you do in that situation when those things then end up in Wikipedia? So you have to develop a sort of strategy. And I mean, this will get even more interesting. Once we have, you know, smart stadiums, once we have facial recognition like you see on Facebook. Once that's implemented across the board, it'll get very interesting. But I'm going to go down that rabbit hole. And instead, I'm going to bring up a question that I'd love to get

• 1:46:03Jamie Foxx?

  But before you go into that.

• 1:46:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:46:05Jamie Foxx?

  Here's the problem.

• 1:46:08Jamie Foxx?

  Back in the day, if there was a misquote and you went to that entity and said, hey, you quoted me wrong. Oh, we'll release a statement saying that we misquoted you and it erases. The problem with today's world, once it's out there, you can't get it back. You cannot change, you cannot change.

• 1:46:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Jamie Foxx?

  Because it's going to stay there.

• 1:46:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Jamie Foxx?

  When you, when I punch up your name, that's the first thing that's going to come up. Or the second thing that's coming, you can't get rid of it.

• 1:46:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Jamie Foxx?

  And when you talk about the regurgitating or the, or the, or just letting it die. You could let it die, but the problem is you have to at least, once it starts, give another, hopefully that you can give another side of it that people may see a little bit.

• 1:46:55Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:46:55Jamie Foxx?

  They don't want to see, what's crazy about our society right now? No one wants to see anybody reconcile. No one wants to see anybody come together or say that. Like when I, when I think about Quentin Tarantino, I spoke and said, I back you as a friend and keep speaking the truth and don't worry about the haters. Meaning speak the truth from you. Not whatever the comment was.

• 1:47:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:47:21Jamie Foxx?

  But whatever you're saying in your truth.

• 1:47:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:47:24Jamie Foxx?

  You say that because you ain't out there. You could be promoting your movie. You could be trying to make money. You actually trying to see how you could get, how you could go. I know the way he thinks. I'm gonna go talk to them. If they are wrong in what they're saying, I'm gonna tell them. But if they are right, he says, "I'll be the one that can go to the cops and say that." And now, look at how it is. It's so crazy. Go ahead, ask a question.

• 1:47:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, I mean, it's, I think you're right. I think that people want gladiatorial games. And we don't have gladiatorial games, so they use the front page.

• 1:47:56Jamie Foxx?

  Oh.

• 1:47:57Tim Ferriss?

  Gladiatorial games. But, but speaking of conflict resolution, so this is, this is a question from a fan, TJ. "My wife is pregnant, we're moving to a very non-diverse neighborhood. We are kind of worried on how it will go. She is black and I am white. What is some advice he can give to a young couple raising a child of color in today's world?"

• 1:48:14Jamie Foxx?

  I'll say this, I'll say, I'll say this about America. Let's use America as an example. To me, America is the most incredible civilization that has ever been created. Hundreds of years from now, people will look on this, look at this place and marvel. There's the bitch in the complain aisle where everybody bitches and complains about every single thing. But the one thing about America that is incredible is the evolution of freedom, the change. When I talk about slavery that happened, it was 300 years of

• 1:48:51Jamie Foxx?

  it, look at the evolution. We come out of it, we have a black president. People are more welcoming now. We used to live in a world, not too long ago, where it was frowned upon, it was tough, it was this. What I would say to people like that, just live your life. Like, I lived my life in places where at times it was definitely racial misunderstanding, but I would talk to that person. I would make sure that person understood who I was as a person. I'm not gonna compromise who I am as far as a black man, but I'm also gonna give you another, another version of it. Not the version that you necessarily

• 1:49:33Jamie Foxx?

  see on television, the version that you see on the internet. I'm gonna give you me. And most of the time, we are alike in so many different, in so many instances. So when he's saying move into that non-diverse place, it's different, man. Look at, look, I hate to say this, but listen to the kids, bro. But when you talk about the kids, the kids today, I'm at the gym last night, 24 Hour Fitness, the kid is playing Future, white kid.

• 1:50:03Jamie Foxx?

  Way your ass is that when I, white kid. When I first moved into my neighborhood years ago and I felt like I made it. I'm in the white neighborhood now, I'm here. Oh, I'm so, I've made it. And I hear NWA blasting. Look out there with these kids, it was 16 years old. So times are changing, man. And you have to start giving people the benefit of the doubt that they'll get it right. And for all those people that were here back in the old days and that are now 50 and 60 and 70 years old, that's dying out. The way of thinking is dying out. You may be looking in a, a situation where you may have the first female president. It's the evolution of, of, it's the evolution of freedom. Think about how we treated women at one point. No voice, no rights, no nothing.

• 1:50:46Jamie Foxx?

  I've heard people say, I'd rather have a black person tell me something to do than a woman any day. But now it's, it's a, so we are on the right path, man. Love who you want to love, be where you want to be because we are evolving. Look at, look, look at the steps that, that, that gay rights took in the past few years. Man, that, that was, that's huge when you, when you're talking about people in the Bible Belt and you know how they felt. So if, if those things are now, like my, my daughter taught me like when she was 13. She's 21 now, she was 13 and that was, this, this was nine years ago and it was talking about gay rights and things like that. And, and, and I asked her friends, I said, what do you think about it? She said, Dad, we don't think about it.

• 1:51:31Jamie Foxx?

  She said, that's, that's you guys. That's a good answer. She said, that's you guys. She said, that's old people. She said, that's why we're turned off from religion sometimes. That's why we're turned off from all of these different things. Cause old people argue about where you from, what you do, what you look like. We don't give a shit. And so thank God for the youth. Thank God for that couple. Because what they're doing is they're showing a new world. And she said, Dad, if someone was doing something somewhere that was straight, gay, black, white or brown somewhere else, does it affect you at all? Does your air change?

• 1:52:05Jamie Foxx?

  Does anything around you change because the people are living the way they want to live? As long as they're not breaking the laws. You know what, you make great points. She went on to my radio show and talked about it. So, uh, we are in a new day. What we gotta do though is, we gotta stop. I said, like I was telling Justine, I said, we gotta make shirts to say, let's put, let's put media out of business. We gotta quit allowing them to control the narrative. Those people like with Quentin Tarantino or the Black Lives Matter or, or people that speak up on something that is broken or that is wrong.

• 1:52:38Jamie Foxx?

  You don't give them a chance by painting them in a, in a bad situation. Are you gonna do another comedy tour? Yeah, I'm gonna do another comedy tour, but my, I'm gonna start it organically, like, uh, maybe a hundred people, two hundred people, start it organically and just sort of grow it. Uh, I got some great jokes. And that's the thing, like when you're, when you're, when you're a comedian, it's like you have to pray that the jokes will open up. So I got some great like jokes that people will get and understand. And then just the stuff that's been going on with me, you know, uh, you know, getting older, you know, uh, not realizing you the OG, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, the young, like the young hip hop guy, what's up OG? Damn, that's right.

• 1:53:22Jamie Foxx?

  You know, I mean, just, just, just, it's just some funny stuff. It's, it's some funny stuff that's, and, and that's what any comedian would tell you that it's hard to be funny when there's nothing funny happening. But there's been so much funny shit happening. Uh, for like my mom who, you know, adopted and who, who gave me up for adoption at seven months and she comes back to live with me. And as she's living with me, she walks down, the first day she's here, she walks down, uh, the steps and says, I want a phantom. I'm like, uh, bitch of the opera, what are you talking about? She's talking about a phantom of Rolls Royce, right? And it was just funny that just certain things that. The fact that everybody lives in my house. The fact that my mom, my dad lives here, my two sisters, my dad still dates.

• 1:54:06Jamie Foxx?

  You know, and my mom is going on his side of the house when she, when he has a date. You know, just assessing, like just being in a way like, oh, hey, hi, I didn't know you had company joy. I mean, just, and now they've turned, they've turned into kids. So, you know, my dad would come to my room, but uh, uh, uh, uh, could you tell her not to come on my side of the house when I got a date? And I'm like, now, parents. So, you know, it's funny things are happening.

• 1:54:29Tim Ferriss?

  Lots of organic material.

• 1:54:31Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, so it's organic now, so we got fun.

• 1:54:34Tim Ferriss?

  When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 1:54:39Jamie Foxx?

  On the bigger picture, because I witnessed this in 2008.

• 1:54:46Jamie Foxx?

  To see President Obama become president to me, 2008.

• 1:54:54Jamie Foxx?

  Not talking about after he became president, because everyone will have their views on, on that. I know what it meant to me. To see him stand up there, put his hand on that Bible and say, you know, become the president of the United States. That is success in so many different ways. And it also, it jars you.

• 1:55:18Jamie Foxx?

  For every person that says, oh, man, just because I'm black, I'm. Maybe you can't use that all the time, because this man now showed you. And whatever side you end up on, because it's not a political thing. To see that. And the reason that it means so much to me to see an African-American man like do that, like, and literally when, uh, when, when, when he was, this was interesting. This is how we're connected. When he was 30 points down for the nomination, 30 points down, no one knew who he was. I get a call from Oprah Winfrey, hi, Jamie Foxx, it's Oprah, hi, Jamie. I was like, what's going on? There's this guy named Senator Obama, I think he's going to be the next president.

• 1:55:58Jamie Foxx?

  Then I got a call from Norman Lear, Jamie, it's Norman Lear, the senator's on fire. So who is he? He says, Senator Obama, but he's 30 points down, so no one knows. The reason they're calling me is because we have a radio show that was reaching everybody, especially the huge urban market. So I go on my show and I say, uh, I'm voting for this guy named Senator Obama because he's black. And I go to commercial.

• 1:56:24Jamie Foxx?

  When I go to commercial, my phone lines light up with all black people saying that we will not vote for this guy just because he's black. Don't treat us that way. So we ended up educating everybody about him. He's the nomination and he goes on and he wins. And to me, it was all odds against him. And I thought that, that, that type of success, regardless of where you come from, like I said, whatever side you stand on, to me, that was something monumental. When we talk about where this country has come from, when you talk about the greatness of America evolving and evolving to that type of freedom and him taking advantage of being in America and becoming a president, to me, that's just

• 1:57:09Jamie Foxx?

  success that, that he redefined what it is.

• 1:57:13Tim Ferriss?

  What historical figure do you most identify with?

• 1:57:17Jamie Foxx?

  Who do I identify with historically? When it comes to entertainment, Sammy Davis Jr. is a person that I look at all the time, who I go on the internet and watch him play the drums, or watch him sing, or watch him dance, or watch him do jokes, or watch him do a movie, or watch him spin guns. To me, he was just the ultimate entertainer.

• 1:57:38Tim Ferriss?

  He was a full stack entertainer, as one engineer said. That's what he called you.

• 1:57:42Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:43Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning he kinda, he had all the tools in the toolkit.

• 1:57:45Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, man, that's great. And then there's, there's other sides of me too. So like the, the sports side, like I was a Magic Johnson, like, you know, the person who was, who loved being competitive, but also wanted to get everybody else involved. And, you know, the way he played basketball. When it comes to social consciousness.

• 1:58:05Tim Ferriss?

  May I interject for a second?

• 1:58:06Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:07Tim Ferriss?

  So, this might seem like a funny question, but do you feel like you identify more with Magic Johnson than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?

• 1:58:14Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah. The reason I feel more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is because Magic smiled and it was fun. He was happy, you know? Not to say that Kareem wasn't, but Kareem was a more serious guy.

• 1:58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Very serious.

• 1:58:25Jamie Foxx?

  If you ever met him, he's... Completely serious. Serious. I'm more the fun dude, let's have a good time, you know. When it comes to social consciousness and social issues, that's where I, I, I draw from a lot of different people. I think going, I, I think watching Martin Luther King and going to Atlanta and seeing what he did and how he did, when he did it. When I look at the bravery of him, it's beyond, because I, I, I look at social issues today, how we're so afraid to step out on anything, like, oh, my, my cars and my, my wealth and my money.

• 1:59:05Jamie Foxx?

  And, and not to say that I've thought this way all my life, like, literally, like, it just happened not too long ago where I was like, we gotta, we gotta step up more, more socially, we gotta be on social con, even if, even if some of the people say, ah, fuck it, I ain't going to your, to your movie. It's like, okay, fine, you weren't gonna go anyway. But we had to step up a little bit more, social, social wise. And when I went to see where Martin Luther King came from, what he did, and how his house was, he actually came from middle class, big nice house, but it's right across the street from po, from poverty. And it sort of taught him how to deal with other cultures. Taught him how to deal with other, uh, uh, financial groups. He says, I don't want to see people hurting. He says, I want everybody, you know, so I, I, I think like that. I've always thought like, uh, even when we talked about earlier,

• 1:59:50Jamie Foxx?

  the Jews and the Palestinians in the, uh, in the student center. You know, the rest of the story was, I befriended both of them. And we all became friends, because I call myself Spackle, which is the stuff that goes in between the bricks. In between the cracks. Yeah, I'm, I'm Spackle. I get along with all religions, get along with all people and try to bring them all together. So that was the, so when I think about it socially, it is the Martin Luther King thing, because I think sometimes we overlook that the world is big enough for all of us to live on, it's big enough for all of us to, to, to get along. And, uh,

• 2:00:23Jamie Foxx?

  Sometimes I I question, why is it so tough to get along? You know, which is what Martin Luther King questions. I just don't, I don't get it and I and I won't stand by so. A little and like I said, I've only thought about like that, you know, here in the past few years, after watching Harry Belafonte go on stage, before I was supposed to get a lifetime achievement award. And he goes on and says something so prolific. He says, uh, they were talking about violence. And he said, the the violence that's happening in America is mostly black violence. And you black entertainers, sit here mute. And we laid all of this groundwork down for you guys and you guys are disrespected and not picking up. So, you know, uh, that's the one reason I said I think more socially.

• 2:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  I mentioned Kareem Abdul Jabbar because I saw just by chance, a fantastic documentary called Minority of One.

• 2:01:14Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:14Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, and it's so good. And it detailed in particular, and I'm not, I'm not at all well versed with basketball. So it was also a glimpse into that world for me. But his relationship with Magic Johnson, which was fascinating.

• 2:01:26Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:26Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular favorite documentaries or movies that you just feel are must watches for human beings? And that's a big question. That's that's why.

• 2:01:37Jamie Foxx?

  I think documentaries on cultures are important. If you get a chance to see a doc, any documentary about Jews and what they went through, watch it. Any documentary documentary about Palestinians and what they've gone through, watch it. Blacks and what they've gone through, watch it. Women and what they've gone through, watch it. The reason that I say it is because if we're talking about the human aspect of it, like I didn't get it until I watched, it was actually The Pianist.

• 2:02:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:10Jamie Foxx?

  And I just went shit. I didn't know it was like that. You know, I didn't know that. And so, you know, and then when I listen to some of my friends who like, you know, live in the Middle East and they're going through those things, I said, shit, I didn't know it was like that. So I think anytime you get to watch, get a chance to watch people and where they come from or culture and what they went through, uh, you can even look at it. Whites breaking away from, I mean, the 13 colonies breaking away from from England. You go, oh shit, I didn't know you went through that. So it's like when you do that, you you you come away with a sense of, okay, I get you now.

• 2:02:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right, helps build your compassion.

• 2:02:51Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, it helps build your compassion because you you you only live in your own world. You know what I'm saying? And unless you get a chance to see what it is, uh, a lot of times your views will be will be narrow. And just watching documentaries like that to to open up your views are just amazing. When you look at, when you look at the story of of, uh, like I said, the story of slavery. There was a book that I just showed these young guys called Without Sanctuary.

• 2:03:19Tim Ferriss?

  Without Sanctuary.

• 2:03:20Jamie Foxx?

  Where it's a book where a guy, a photographer, went around in the South during the times of slavery and documented lynchings.

• 2:03:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oof.

• 2:03:30Jamie Foxx?

  And he would document the lynching and take and make postcards. Because at that time, see, we go oof, but at that time, it was commonplace.

• 2:03:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Jamie Foxx?

  It was a party. So people would get their food. This is where they got picnic from. They would get their food, drinks or whatever, and they would go down and watch the lynching. And so there was a postcard that said, here's the lynching of Nigga Charlie. Uh, I hope you like it. I hope everything is well. So that was something that was mind blowing because it was commonplace, you know, so, um, when you get it, like I said, when you get a chance to see cultures and history, you understand what what's going on today. And this is the last little factoid. If you get a chance, pull up the Harrison Act. The Harrison Act was an act about taking drugs off the street and making them illegal. Because it, uh, at at at the time in our culture, we were able to, you know, use whatever drugs that was out there, was available.

• 2:04:24Jamie Foxx?

  But the government sort of didn't know how to get it off the streets, so they ran a story, black man gets high on cocaine and fights cops. And people was like, so we gotta get rid of drugs. People were like, fuck that. I'm getting rid of our drugs. Get bigger guns. Give cops more jurisdiction. Finally, they run a story, black man gets high on cocaine, rapes and kills Caucasian woman. That's when Harrison Act, because well, we don't want that. But because of that Harrison Act with the jurisdiction of a cop.

• 2:04:55Jamie Foxx?

  That plays into a little bit of what we're dealing with today. Because it was sort of set that way at a time where it was commonplace to see slaves. It was commonplace to see blacks as second or third-class citizens. So, and it's not to incite anything, it's not to make you feel anything angry. It's just a, it's just a peering into someone's genesis to see where we are today. So that you can understand to, or try to have the compassion for all, all of us who live here in this country. Because like I said, it's, it's the best in the world.

• 2:05:35Tim Ferriss?

  And beyond, I remember a friend mentioned to me, I was watching Planet Earth and he said there's a companion of some type, which I really want to see called, I think it's Humans of Earth. And it actually profiles different civilizations, different cultures around the world. It shows you how humans have adapted, you know, Mongolians using falcons for hunting and all of this and whatnot. But the, um, yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that, you know, if a culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors, you have to, in a way, be taken on that sensory experience to develop the compassion. You don't get it through text alone necessarily.

• 2:06:09Tim Ferriss?

  If you could have a billboard anywhere, what would it say?

• 2:06:16Jamie Foxx?

  Man, it would constantly change. It would be those new billboards.

• 2:06:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's a sneaky answer, I like it.

• 2:06:22Jamie Foxx?

  It would be the billboard saying, "Ball out, dog. Have a great time, go to church, love somebody, teach somebody, get angry a little bit." It would just change, you know, because, you know, these guys know me, I'm all about having, and at the end of the last one, we have as much fun as you can. Because in a blink of an eye.

• 2:06:47Jamie Foxx?

  We'll all be gone. A hundred years compared to infinity is nothing. I talk to my sister all the time. Why you? She be like, amazing. What's wrong? I said, girl, you better get, you better start having some fun. We gonna be gone in a minute. You gonna look back and say like, shit, I should have been laughing. And now I'm dead. So, yeah, my billboard would change constantly, because I, I think we all change.

• 2:07:09Tim Ferriss?

  You said get angry a little bit. And it's, and I remember I was given this advice by a guy named Poe Bronson, a writer, many, many years ago. I asked him at an event, I was sitting in the crowd, and I said, what do you do when you get writer's block? And he said, I write about what makes me angry. And if you, if you were teaching a ninth grade class, mixed race, mixed gender, what would you, what would you teach that class about? Like, what would, what would you teach? What, what do you think the most important things, skills, or otherwise, that you could teach ninth graders might be?

• 2:07:39Jamie Foxx?

  Well, like I said, it would have to be different tiered. If it's a ninth grader of today, I would teach him, as much as you can, interact with actual humans. You know, the toughest thing in the world is like, looking at my daughter and we're in Paris and

• 2:07:54Tim Ferriss?

  Generous thumbs.

• 2:07:56Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, they're on their, they're on their, they're on their cell phones. So I said, as much as you can, interact with people. Because people, it's the best interaction because there's all types. And there's discretion when it comes to people. Like, there's no discretion when it comes to thumbs and what you can say on the internet. And that's why you get drugged down by it. Because it doesn't take anything, if they're, if it's an anonymous person and they say you're ugly and you're this and you're that and you're this, there's no discretion there. So they can sort of get the venom off. I said, when you're, if we're, if we're in a surrounding, and I may feel something about something, but I won't say it because I, I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. I, I don't want to have to hurt my feelings.

• 2:08:41Jamie Foxx?

  So, that's the one thing, interact with people. The second thing is,

• 2:08:47Jamie Foxx?

  Interact with people from all over the world. Because you become narrow when you're just all about my block. And just being about your block in today's world is going to hurt us. Because people don't understand global. We don't understand global market. We don't understand global things that how does something in the Middle East affect me in North Dakota? Because of the way we're set up like this. So it's like you have to get the education. I would bypass, well, no, I wouldn't bypass it. Get the education of people all over. And then the last, well, last couple of things would be history. Know your history. Know why we're, why we're here.

• 2:09:32Jamie Foxx?

  Why this, especially when it comes to, to, to rules and legislation and things like that. Know why, uh, why we vote, why we don't vote. Uh, if you think about it, this wonderful country runs on just like a human brain. We only use a little bit of it when it comes to the voting market. You gotta vote. Get out there and be active in that. A lot of times we just, hey, man, whoever's the president is the president, whoever's this way. So, so that. And then, uh, um, the last part that I would teach is last two things. Hustle, teach your hustle. Your hustle muscle is, but hustle muscle is the most important thing.

• 2:10:12Jamie Foxx?

  Uh, when you hustle and you go get it, a lot of times that alleviates your problems. When you don't hustle or you leave it to chance, when you leave things to chance and you didn't give it all that day. Now you start to argue or wonder about things. Bills, fuck, I gotta get that done. Oh, my relationship is, how did it? But if you hustle, for one, it's going to take up a lot more of your time. So you don't have time to, to concentrate on just. The worrying. The worrying. If I put the work in, I got my check. I put it in there and your check can be, doesn't have to be monetary. It could be anything. It could be, I put the work in at the charity and this happened because of the charity. But whatever it is, put that hard work in.

• 2:10:54Jamie Foxx?

  And now, you could see things coming to fruition and that takes seventy percent of your worrying away because you did give it your all. And then, uh, the last part of it is, re- reflect. Sit still for a minute. Cause when you're working, working, working, working, I got this, I got that, that will strain you as well. So you gotta be able to decompress. You just gotta be able to chill, whatever it is that you chill with. If it's your home, it's your friends, whatever, like, take time out to be like, you know what? I, I, if, if, if it's out of my hands, it's out of my hands. I'll get a better crack at it tomorrow. Colin Powell says something incredible.

• 2:11:37Jamie Foxx?

  He said, "I always feel like in the morning, I got a brand new chance." And I'm paraphrasing. In the morning, he said, "I, I love getting in the mo- to the morning because it's a new opportunity." But really take that time for yourself, you know, relax, chill, whatever it is that you believe in. If it's God, Buddha, Allah, Hindu, all of them, whatever it is to get you on, on that, on that, okay, you know, I did what I was supposed to do. Let me relax now and then tomorrow, the next day, get another, another start.

• 2:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  What is, uh, what does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? Or what, do you have any morning routines that are important to you?

• 2:12:11Jamie Foxx?

  Morning routines? I, I wake up, I, uh, I text the people that I dig and love.

• 2:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  What do you say?

• 2:12:22Jamie Foxx?

  I just send them encouraging, like, you know, there's a few, you know, people that just, you know, really mean a lot to me, wanna let them know I'm thinking about them, the whole nine. And then, uh, uh, it varies, man. Sometimes I'll be like, okay, I, I put some work in, so I put in eight days. So maybe these two days I could chill, uh, get a little, I do the, uh, just on the physical part, I get my, uh, I get my fifty pull-ups in, hundred sit-ups, you know, maybe a hundred, uh, maybe a hundred crunches and it's easy. I used to not be able to do it. My, my boy Tyron Turner.

• 2:13:00Tim Ferriss?

  How many sets for the fifty pull-ups?

• 2:13:02Jamie Foxx?

  For the fifty? So I do fifteen first, fifteen pull-ups. This is what it is. I do fifteen pull-ups. Fifty pushups, hundred situps. Then I go back and I do fifteen different.

• 2:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, chin.

• 2:13:15Jamie Foxx?

  Grip.

• 2:13:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17Jamie Foxx?

  So that'll get me to thirty. Another fifty pushups, that gets me to a hundred pushups, I'm done with the pushups. And then I do ten and ten, back to the, to the first grip. And you don't have to do it every single day, you can do it every other day. Uh, and then what you notice is the pull-up bar. And Tyrone kept telling me this. Well, we, I got a home retard and he played Kane in Minnesota Society and he, I kept wondering, how is he always in shape? He says, man, I'm trying to tell you, the pull-up bar is everything. So, uh, so that, and then, um, and then just, you know, make the calls and what I need to get done and make sure I'm, you know, in the right, you know, position and.

• 2:13:58Tim Ferriss?

  Do you drink coffee?

• 2:13:58Jamie Foxx?

  Get the kid, I don't drink coffee. I don't drink coffee.

• 2:14:02Tim Ferriss?

  Is, have you, have you never? Oh, you stopped?

• 2:14:05Jamie Foxx?

  I had to stop having stimulants. There was, um.

• 2:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  It's you and me.

• 2:14:09Jamie Foxx?

  Earlier in my career, I was, I was all about the stimulants.

• 2:14:15Jamie Foxx?

  So at a certain point, I had to.

• 2:14:17Tim Ferriss?

  Ex-nay on the caffeine, Kay.

• 2:14:19Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:14:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've been, I've been cutting that out as well. It's not good for me. People are like, aren't you worried about depressants, alcohol? I'm like, no, no, no, no. Stimulants, that's what I need to be worried about.

• 2:14:28Jamie Foxx?

  Cause when I tell people all the time to drink coffee, after a while, you, you, you keep, you keep hitting that same muscle, you know, that in, in your brain to where you, I, I know people right now who could drink four cups of coffee and go to sleep.

• 2:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I used to be that person.

• 2:14:41Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, and so it's like my, my, and one of my boys loves, uh, uh, uh, what is it, Red Bull?

• 2:14:45Tim Ferriss?

  Red Bull.

• 2:14:46Jamie Foxx?

  And then he won't understand why, some days he'll just be like this.

• 2:14:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:49Jamie Foxx?

  So I had to stop and it was tough because I had to have coffee every day and I drank like double espressos. You know, I was like, I had to have the up.

• 2:15:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:00Jamie Foxx?

  But now I know how to go get it inside of my, you know, I know how to go get it inside.

• 2:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  Last, last question here is, um, I'm gonna ask what advice you would give to yourself? Three different ages, twenty, thirty and forty. Um, so what advice would you give to your twenty-year-old self?

• 2:15:13Jamie Foxx?

  Man, put the condom on.

• 2:15:16Jamie Foxx?

  Shit, stop playing around.

• 2:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Important advice.

• 2:15:23Jamie Foxx?

  Twenty, man, put that on, buddy. And not the fishnet one either, put the real one on.

• 2:15:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, uh, anything else for twenty, or should we move to thirty?

• 2:15:34Jamie Foxx?

  Twenty, twenties, I had my daughter twenty-six. So the advice I would give me was like, calm down. You know, it was like, calm down and, and just, you know, make sure you're paying attention to your daughter and to the daughter's mom. Twenties was tough, cause I just got to LA, I was just, you know, man, the whole world was opening up. So I'm like, man, I'm, you know, I'm trying to do all of it. And why I was like, calm down, and, and luckily, it was twenty-six, so moving into thirty, I was, uh, on my way to calming, if that makes sense.

• 2:16:18Tim Ferriss?

  Does make sense. So then you hit thirty.

• 2:16:20Jamie Foxx?

  Thirty.

• 2:16:21Tim Ferriss?

  What advice would you give your thirty-year-old self?

• 2:16:23Jamie Foxx?

  Uh, it's gonna go fast.

• 2:16:27Tim Ferriss?

  In what way?

• 2:16:27Jamie Foxx?

  It's gonna go fast, the time is gonna go fast. So just make sure that you, uh, you start now, planning for your future. And not only is it gonna go fast, but don't spend all your money.

• 2:16:42Jamie Foxx?

  Don't buy the, the jacket that's twelve thousand dollars. You know, relax, you know, just, just relax it because it's good. And forty is gonna come so fast, and you don't think that it is, but it's gonna come so fast.

• 2:16:57Tim Ferriss?

  And would you say that because you would want your thirty-year-old self to pay attention to the present moment? Or do long-term thinking, or both?

• 2:17:04Jamie Foxx?

  Long-term. When you're thirty, you got a kid, and you're in my business, and in any business. All businesses are gonna, especially when, when you, when, when you make, my business is about me. So I have to be careful in my decisions socially, uh, and, and plan for the future. It's not gonna be, I remember, uh, uh, doing my television show, and it went, five years went fast, and I would tell the people on my television show, it's gonna go fast, man. And if you finish at thirty-five, but you live till seventy. You know, so you have to really think about the future.

• 2:17:41Tim Ferriss?

  The long game.

• 2:17:42Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:43Tim Ferriss?

  And then forty, big four zero.

• 2:17:47Jamie Foxx?

  Wow, forty. There, there are gonna be tough decisions that you have to make when it comes to business. Cause in your forty, when you're forty, in my business, the window is closing on certain things. So you have to be able to open those windows to other things. And some of the people that you've gone to, to battle with till you're forty, may not be the ones that you will battle and do business with towards fifty. And take a little bit of your, uh, personal feelings out of it. Because I'm very personal. Uh, meaning like I would stay with someone even if I feel that they're not up to par business wise, but you know, we have history.

• 2:18:31Jamie Foxx?

  Take a little bit of the personal out of it, still remain friends if you can with that person. Because now it's really pending, like fifty about to be here. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, you know, and, uh, I would tell my forty year old self, grow up in your mind, but not in your body necessarily. Meaning stay young in your body, but certain parts of your life, you have to grow up and be, be grown about things. Because now you got another kid, your other child is, you know, twenty, she's twenty one now. Which is just, you know, it's past years, so, but she was, you know, thirteen, fourteen if, when I was forty.

• 2:19:13Jamie Foxx?

  But now you gotta start living, uh, you would always live your life a hundred percent for you. But now that you have your kids and they're a certain age, it's gotta be thirty to forty percent you. Sixty to seven percent what you're gonna leave for them and how you're gonna leave them. Because like I said, it's, it's flying and that's it.

• 2:19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Jamie, so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time. And where can people find what you're up to? Find you online, learn?

• 2:19:45Jamie Foxx?

  You can find me at IamJamieFox on my Periscope, am I right? Am I saying this right? You know, I got these young cats telling me what to do.

• 2:19:53Tim Ferriss?

  And then I am Jamie Foxx on Twitter also.

• 2:19:54Jamie Foxx?

  I am Jamie Foxx on Twitter. I'm doing better on Twitter. I'm trying to do better.

• 2:19:58Tim Ferriss?

  And?

• 2:20:00Jamie Foxx?

  Twitter, you're the old fella trying to.

• 2:20:02Tim Ferriss?

  The latest album?

• 2:20:03Jamie Foxx?

  The latest album's called Hollywood Story of a Dozen Roses. It's out. I don't care how you get it. You can download it, bootleg it, steal it from a friend. I don't care. I just want you to, I just want you to hear the music. The song that's out right now is "I'm Supposed to Be in Love by Now."

• 2:20:19Jamie Foxx?

  I'm supposed to be in love by now.

• 2:20:26Jamie Foxx?

  It's been so long for me, I don't know how.

• 2:20:34Jamie Foxx?

  Been drowning in the sea of broken vows.

• 2:20:41Jamie Foxx?

  But I'm supposed to be in love by now.

• 2:20:48Jamie Foxx?

  I've been chasing my dream, now I'm chasing you. Running hard, but my legs feel weak. I done played every part, I done played a fool. Write the movie, I'd be your lead.

• 2:21:04Jamie Foxx?

  I'm supposed to be in love by now.

• 2:21:11Jamie Foxx?

  Well, girl, you stole my heart, now take a bow.

• 2:21:17Jamie Foxx?

  In love by now.

• 2:21:24Jamie Foxx?

  So make sure you get that.

• 2:21:27Jamie Foxx?

  "In Love by Now" is out. It's a song that my daughter made me.

• 2:21:32Jamie Foxx?

  She sort of made me do. She's like, listen, stop with the club stuff. Stop with, and that's my, my oldest daughter's like funny. She said, stop with the club joints. Stop, you're trying to be too young. Like even, she'd even, like, I had on some shoes one day that she thought was just, I had too young of a shoe. She's like, Dad, what is that on your feet? I said, what's your, they, they the new style, baby. They's the Giuseppe's. You know, it's this new style. I had a zipper on and a buckle and my name engraved and she was like, stop it. She said, Dad, you have old feet. I said, what does that mean? You have old feet, like you have, you have feet for marching, like a civil rights. You have a civil rights feet. So, uh, but she said, do a song that we know that is from you.

• 2:22:16Jamie Foxx?

  And, and it's true, I'm supposed to be in Love By Now. And so, uh, so that and, uh, jumping out of the window.

• 2:22:25Jamie Foxx?

  And, uh, we just shot the In Love By Now video with George Lopez. Is the priest, I get stood up at the altar. George Lopez is the priest, Nicole Scherzinger, uh, and we all know her from the Pussycat Dolls, but also her solo career and, and everything. She plays my love interest, which is great because she's a good friend. And so we were able to like really get into some like, uh, you know, they don't do old school videos anymore. Like this actually has a bit of a story. My man Tank is in it and then all of my friends, my daughter's in it, my little daughter's in it. And, uh, my mom and dad is in it and, you know, so it's, uh, it's kind of cool.

• 2:22:59Tim Ferriss?

  I was, um, jamming to Babies in Love.

• 2:23:02Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's the type of music I listen to before I'm, when I'm headed somewhere to, to write, sit down, do some creative work.

• 2:23:08Jamie Foxx?

  Yeah, man, babies in love.

• 2:23:10Tim Ferriss?

  Solid.

• 2:23:11Jamie Foxx?

  Babies on top. I think Justin Bieber was supposed to do that song for us. And we were lucky enough to get it, but, uh, Babies in Love, Kid Inc. is on there. So, you know, we got some good stuff going. And then, uh, later on, uh, Sleepless Nights will be out at some point. And then, uh, we'll start work on the, uh, Mike Tyson, uh, bio and, uh, and that's it. And then the, the standup comedy is coming because like I said, I got a lot of stuff that, you know, I gotta get off, uh, get off my chest and that's it.

• 2:23:37Tim Ferriss?

  Since you brought up Mike, what, what would Mike say if he were here right now?

• 2:23:40Jamie Foxx?

  Well, I'm gonna say it like this because now that I'm about to do the, the movie, to do the Mike Tyson impersonation.

• 2:23:53Jamie Foxx?

  Would be a little disservice. What I would say is, is that I met Mike when I was 21 years old. I went on stage and I was doing my joke and I was getting to my Mike Tyson joke and I went into it and no one laughed. Because Mike was in the audience. A guy was in the audience with Mike and said, "Yo, Mike is in here, motherfucker." I was like, "Oh, man." The black girl in the front was like, "What you gonna do, Jamie? You gonna tell your jokes? You scared of Mike Tyson?" This is when Mike Tyson was knocking people out for nothing. I did, and then the guy yells out, "Mike said do the joke." And that shit better be funny. I was like, "Oh, shit." So I do the joke, it's a standing ovation. I come offstage and Mike goes, "There he is, I wanna talk to you. You're so funny, come, come hang out with me. You're funny, motherfucker, come on, get in the car with me." And we take off. And I started hanging out with Mike Tyson at 21 years old. It was the most incredible thing in the world.

• 2:24:37Jamie Foxx?

  Mike was bigger than Michael Jackson at that time. He was just, he was the biggest person, biggest star in the world. Mike would be in a club, see a girl and say, "Hi, how are you? Like BMWs?" They're like, "Huh? Do you like BMWs? You like cars?" Yeah, he would go open up the BMW dealership, they buy, he'll buy a car for a girl. That's how dope he was. And then all of his boys would go to all the different cities and pick up the cars that he bought for girls and say, "Yo, come on, get the keys back, you know he's playing." So it was great to see, it was great to see him during that time, then it was tough to see him when he went through what he went through. And then when we finally decided to do this movie, This Is The Mike Tyson, and I think people will really be able to grasp, is that when we show Mike Tyson older, and I called Mike and I said, "Mike, how are you? I'll pray this to Allah, my brother, I'm happy, how are you?"

• 2:25:21Jamie Foxx?

  I said, "I'm good, Mike, you know, what's up? What's going on?" "I'm just happy, I'm happy because I don't have any money anymore, so I'm happy." I was like, "Mike, what does that mean?" "No, it's just all the vultures that were around me the whole time. It was always after my money, so I don't have any money, so nobody wants anything from me, so I'm just so happy." And if you notice, his speaking voice, like what I told you with Bill Cosby, is completely different from when he's onstage, when he's getting ready to fight. So he was like, "I'm just so happy." And- I could tell, I said, Mike, that's the person we need to tell. That's the story. We always see the person who rises to the mountaintop, but we don't see the other side of the mountain and all the jagged edges and all the things and you're about to slip off of that mountain.

• 2:26:04Jamie Foxx?

  So Terry Winter, who wrote, you know, Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire, and Martin Scorsese, who's gonna direct it, who hasn't directed a film about boxing since Rage and Bull. So fingers crossed if it all goes together, we'll be able to see Mike Tyson in a different way and we'll be able to transform to where I wanna be so good that as Mike Tyson, that I look so much like him that when I walk into his house, his kids would acknowledge me as a father. And then I wanna be able to sit back and reflect. And here's what I'm trying to do with a career, is establish characters.

• 2:26:46Jamie Foxx?

  In Living Color, it was Wanda. Hey, for real, I'll rock your world. Then it was Willie Beaman, Any Given Sunday. My name is Willie. Willie Beaman, I keep the ladies screaming. Then it's Ray Char- no, it's Bundini Brown from Ali. Muhammad Ali's a prophet. How you gonna be God's son? Soon as you come out the garage, you be number two. So Bundini Brown. And then it's, eh, yeah. Well, I got a woman way over town that's good to me. Then it's Ray Charles. And then it's Django. You know they love you very well, Django. So the Django experience, you know, working with Quentin Tarantino,

• 2:27:30Jamie Foxx?

  which was mind blowing to be able to go in and read for that. And I didn't know about that part. I thought Will Smith was gonna do it. I was like, woo, Will Smith and Quentin Tarantino, this is incredible, incredible. It didn't work out that way. I meet with Quentin Tarantino. I told him I understand the script and I said, not only that, I have my own horse. And so I ended up riding my own horse in Django. And I knew that that was gonna be another character that's gonna change the game. And so they'll look at that, so they'll say Django. And then hopefully, if everything goes right, Mike Tyson will sit with those characters. So that you'll be able to, after a while, look at a career where...

• 2:28:14Jamie Foxx?

  You transformed into a character. People know it and were moved by it. And hopefully, if it all works out, it'll be a great, it'll be a great opportunity to look back and see like, wow, man, look at the things that you were able to do in America.

• 2:28:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's an incredible canon already. And my brother gave me Mike Tyson's autobiography for Christmas last year. And I sat down, I read it because when I was a kid, I would watch on the grainy VHS, Mike Tyson's Greatest Hits, over and over and over. And you'd see his reception in Japan. He was the biggest star on the face of the planet. But you read the autobiography and there are layers upon layers.

• 2:28:57Jamie Foxx?

  A lot, a lot. A guy who just wanted to be in love, just wanted to, this is, you know, it was more simple than we thought it was.

• 2:29:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I can't wait to see it. I hope it comes together.

• 2:29:08Jamie Foxx?

  I hope so.

• 2:29:09Tim Ferriss?

  Jamie, you are the consummate performer and entertainer. So please keep creating.

• 2:29:14Jamie Foxx?

  Oh, man, thank you.

• 2:29:15Tim Ferriss?

  This has been such a gift. Thank you for your time.

• 2:29:19Jamie Foxx?

  Thank you, buddy.

• 2:29:19Tim Ferriss?

  And for everybody listening, you can find all the show notes, links to everything at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. You can search my name and Jamie's and it'll probably pop right up. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

• 2:29:34Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:30:18Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:30:25Tim Ferriss?

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