‘Coming 2 America’ brings SNL veterans together for warm, nostalgic sequel.
‘SNL’ veterans excited to join Eddie Murphy on sequel to popular 1988 ‘Black fairy tale’
In the new film “Coming 2 America,” African American cast members from three eras of “Saturday Night Live” — Eddie Murphy, Tracy Morgan and Leslie Jones — appear onscreen together. And naturally, the trio occasionally chopped it up about their experiences on the longrunning sketch show.
“Yeah, we talked about that stuff,” Morgan told The Chronicle during a recent phone interview from his New Jersey home. “But, more importantly, what I said to Eddie — and what Leslie said to me — was, ‘Thank you for holding the door for us, Eddie.’ And Leslie would say, ‘Thank you for keeping the door open for me.’ ”
Murphy once again held the door for Morgan and Jones for this film, which begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, March 5. This sequel to the beloved 1988 comedy “Coming to America” — where Murphy’s Prince Akeem of Zamunda travels to Queens, N.Y., to find his future wife — has him back in the Big Apple. This time, it’s to locate his son ( Jermaine Fowler), conceived in a hazy onenight stand before the prince got married. Jones plays Fowler’s mother and Morgan plays his uncle.
Murphy literally brought the band back together for the sequel, which Amazon Studios acquired for $125 million in October, after the pandemic prevented a summer theatrical release. Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, James Earl
Jones and John Amos are just some of the familiar faces who share screen time with the new cast, which includes Wesley Snipes (Murphy’s costar in “Dolemite Is My Name”), KiKi Layne (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) and R&B vocalist Teyana Taylor.
Jones was psyched to get in on the reunion, especially since the original came out around the time she started doing standup.
“I am Black, so I have a place in my heart for it,” says Jones, on the phone from Los Angeles. “I would say I hold all of Eddie Murphy’s movies dearly. I think that one was a special one because it was just, like, almost a Spielberg moment for me — for Eddie — because the movie was so beautiful. It looked beautiful. The costumes were beautiful. The actors were great. The plot was great.”
Much like the generations of audiences who adore the original for being a very funny — and Afrocentric — love story, the kind of movie that still rarely gets made in Hollywood, Morgan shares the same sentiment.
“As a person — especially as a Black person — it was a Black fairy tale,” he says. “It was important for me to see Africa in a different light. It was impor
tant for me to see royalty — Black royalty, Black excellence.”
It didn’t take much for the pair to get into character. Morgan immediately knew whom he would model his mackadocious, wisdomspitting Uncle Reem on. “I had an uncle named Michael, who was the same way with me,” he says. “My mom and my dad split up, and he played that role in my life, the caretaker in my life. He was the one that always told me to never forget where you come from.”
As for Jones, she looked to her best girlfriends for inspiration for wildchildturnedsinglemom Mary. “Most of my homegirls were Mary Junson,” she says. “So, it was easy to look back into my life and find that character.”
While Morgan and Jones are both known for being unfiltered adlibbers, Morgan says he wasn’t heavy with the improv “because the writing was so great,” he says.
“And, you know, working under the heavy tutelage of the first cast and (Vallejoborn director) Craig Brewer — you know, the writing was so great, we didn’t really have to improv,” Morgan continues. “But he would give us the love and the freedom to try stuff, and we would. And if it worked, it was great.”
Even with all the nuttiness, either scripted or extemporaneous, that goes on in the film, Jones believes that “Coming 2 America” will give viewers a warm, cozy feeling of nostalgia.
“I think you’re gonna feel, like, a sense of home, you know what I mean,” Jones says. “You’re gonna feel like, ‘OK, the world’s still all right.’ ”