We all know Jamie Foxx can carry a tune, but Saturday’s rendition of the national anthem during the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight fell a little short for just about everyone viewing the highly anticipated match. To add insult to injury, it appears that Foxx had no idea he flopped.
“I … saw Denzel Washington [and] he was like, ‘That was amazing,’ ” Foxx said. “Jim Gray was like, ‘You nailed it, it was the best.’ Then when we looked on the Internet or somebody told me about the Internet [and] they said, ‘Oh people are really clowning you.’ Then when I listened I said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re off. In the stadium, you would have thought I was getting a standing ovation but the telecast it was different — it was so off,” the 47-year-old actor told “Entertainment Tonight.”
Now, after tons of backlash on social media, Foxx is defending his performance, telling “Access Hollywood” his rendition fell flat due to his inability to hear the organ and people just wanting something to complain about it. (Now if we could only get Foxx to stop talking about it).
“First of all, everybody calm down,” Foxx said. “We had a little bit of a situation with our earpieces. The [ear] pack actually dropped off, so I couldn’t, you know … hear what’s playing, so I just had to go on my own. Hopefully, they understand. It’s just the national anthem.”
“I think a little bit was just people wanted to have something to talk about,” he added, joking. “But everything’s cool and the national anthem will be on my album and I’m gonna do whatever the hell I want to.”
With the anthem behind him, Foxx is making the rounds promoting his new album, Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses, which will be out May 18. On Tuesday he joined the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” and there, too, he stressed that technical difficulties were to blame for a performance that was “a little off.”
What did you think of Foxx’s anthem performance? Sound off in the comment section below.
