How Diddy and Drake Helped Inspire Jamie Foxx’s Game Show ‘Beat Shazam’
Actor Jamie Foxx isn’t just known for his movies and his singing career. He’s also a gameshow host, headlining the popular Fox show Beat Shazam. Foxx explained how partying with Drake and Diddy helped him get into his new role as a game show host.
Jamie Foxx partying with Diddy helped him with ‘Beat Shazam’
Beat Shazam wasn’t the first time Foxx was on TV. He was the lead of his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, for several years before successfully transitioning into movies. However, Beat Shazam was Foxx’s first time in front of an audience as a gameshow host. One of the reasons he decided to host the interactive competition series was because many of his contemporaries had their own shows.
“What it was is that everybody has shows — J.Lo has a show [Shades of Blue], Kevin Hart has a show [Real Husbands of Hollywood], The Rock has a show [Ballers] — and I’ve always been a TV person, right? And we’d been trying to get the show together for the past couple years with [executive producers] Jeff Apploff and Mark Burnett. It’s a perfect fit for me because I come from music, we dig the fun, I’m always throwing parties, and so that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a party atmosphere, but we got a game show in it with the app Shazam, so it all sort of made sense,” Foxx told Billboard.
In Beat Shazam, teams compete against each other by trying to identify hit songs based on lyrics. Eventually, the finalists compete against the music app Shazam for a massive cash prize.
Given how the show is based on music, the Oscar winner pulled from his passion for music to inform his game show persona. He also referenced how the likes of Diddy and Drake helped Foxx figure out how to perform during the game show.
“I feel like I’ve been living a game show my whole life. Because the aspect of it is, like, I would do this party at my house, and I would call it an On My Balcony Party where I would have like Drake or Diddy or someone like that host, and I’m sort of emceeing the party. It’s basically the same muscle; it’s just like now it’s wrapped up into a cool game show format where all the music being played and the people having to guess the songs — it’s really dope,” Foxx said.
Jamie Foxx once called out Diddy for his extravagant parties
Both Diddy and Foxx are known for becoming party animals when the time is right. But Foxx was caught off guard by the extravagance of Diddy’s parties. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he reflected on a conversation he had with Diddy about his parties.
“I would hang out and watch him throw parties. … He threw a party and said, ‘Yo playboy, this party costs a million and a half dollars.’ I’m like, ‘You are out of your mind,'” Foxx said. “I said, ‘Puff, I will throw you a party for 400 bucks that will rival this party.'”
It turned out Foxx kept his word. He invited Diddy to a modest party, and the controversial mogul had a good time.
“I said, ‘Puff, look over there on the dinner table, I got Kentucky Fried Chicken. I put it on a nice plate…I got Coca-Cola. I put it in a pitcher. We are at $208 and we are killin’ it right now,'” Foxx said.
