Friends, we’ve been deceived, lied to, led astray – and it’s time for it to come to an end.
Jamie Foxxis ridiculously talented, there’s no denying that – watch him perform this operatic cover of Rihanna’s song as proof.
There is one thing we can deny though, and that’s that we know him by his real name.
I know some of you might be saying the double x’s in Foxx might have been a pretty good hint, but should I be punished for being too trusting?
Twitter went into a meltdown as the news spread that his real name is in fact Eric Marlon Bishop.
Others couldn’t understand how the world was so naive.
Fortunately, along with the trickery comes a fantastic anecdote.
The reason for the name change came about when Jamie/Eric was doing stand-up comedy.
“I used to do stand-up in a club in LA and I went up and I had a great set and when I had a great set I couldn’t get back up for six weeks because comedians ran the list,” he told David Letterman in 2014.
“So I go to another place … and I noticed that like 1000 guys show up and only three girls, but the three girls would always get a spot. So I went to the list and wrote down a unisex name … Jamie Foxx. And I’m the first guy called. He’d go, ‘Jamie Foxx, is she here?’ I said, ‘No brother, that’s me’.”
But Eric to Jamie wasn’t such a smooth transition.
“I really killed [on stage] but people would be like, ‘Yo Jamie, yo Jamie!’ and I wouldn’t respond,” he said.
“I forgot that was my name … People thought I was arrogant.”
Well there you go folks. We’ll leave you with Jamie/Eric recounting the intervention Oprah hosted for him way back when with none other than Sidney Poitier, an actor who never lied about his name.
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