Eddie Murphy makes most of pandemic by revisiting past.
COMEDIAN DISHES ON WORK, HIS FAMOUS CHARACTERS AND HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED HIM
Like a lot of us, Eddie Murphy thought he had the next few years figured out. Then the pandemic came along and threw all those plans out the window.
After “sitting on the couch for eight years,” the comedian had plotted a multi-year reset on a career that began 40 years ago on Saturday Night Live.
It started in the fall of 2019, when he returned to the screen to play the comic Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name. That was followed in December by his long-awaited return to Studio 8H as host of SNL for the first time since 1984.
“Then it was going to be Coming 2 America, and I was going to go do standup on the road,” the 59-year-old comedian says wistfully in a Zoom call from Los Angeles.
“After that,” he chuckles, “I was going to go get back on the couch again.”
Instead, his Coming to America sequel, which was supposed to be in theatres last Christmas, is now on Amazon Prime Video and the standup tour is indefinitely delayed.
Q The original Coming to America was the first movie of yours I saw in theatres, so I’ve always had an affinity for that title. What has the first one meant to you over the course of the past 32 years?
A Coming to America is special because it has a historic significance. Not just with me. Coming to America is the very first movie in the history of the movie business — of all the movies made — that has an all-black cast that was successful all around the world. Everybody loved it. It’s the first movie like that; with all Black folks. How about this? Since then, there’s only been one other movie with an all-black cast that was successful all around the world and that was Black Panther.
Q Why do you think Coming to America resonated with people all around the world? A The themes are universal. Usually when African-americans tell our stories we talk about things that happened in the Civil Rights movement or some type of social injustice or some traumatic event. We have a dark history and that’s on the screen a lot. It’s not like when you go to a movie theatre and you watch a regular movie, and you forget about your troubles for an hour-and-ahalf.
It’s dark themes a lot of the times. Coming to America had none of that.
Coming to America was a modern-day fairy tale. It’s about love and family and breaking tradition and doing the right thing — those are universal themes.
The same themes are in Fiddler on the Roof, and those themes work all around the world. People will go see movies that are about this kind of stuff. Coming to America had Black people onscreen (playing) kings and queens and princes. We’re never that in movies. It’s happened three times: Coming to America, Black Panther and Coming to America 2 — that’s (where you find) your Black kings and queens and princes and princesses.
Q I know there had been talk about a sequel over the years. Why was now the right time to do it?
A It happened all organically. Over the years, people would pitch movies or a play or a TV show, and none of the ideas ever stuck with me. But over the years, the movie became a cult picture.
They started doing stuff — there’s a restaurant here in Hollywood where on Halloween they change into a Mcdowell’s. You can get a Sexual Chocolate milkshake and stuff like that. On Halloween people dress up as characters from the movie.
VH1 played the movie for 24 hours straight. Along the way, lines from the movie have worked their way into the culture — like a Black person might say, “sexual chocolate,” if someone does something sexy. And the mike drop … the very first mike drop ever is in the first Coming to America. When Randy Watson drops the mike … he invented the mike drop. All of that stuff bubbled up and it helped the movie stick around. It became this kind of cult movie and that’s why I got the idea that people might go see (a sequel).
Q You’ve played so many iconic movie characters — Axel Foley in the Beverly Hills Cop series, Reggie Hammond from 48 Hours, Sherman Klump from The Nutty Professor. Where does Akeem rank for you?
A I’m one of the few Black actors whose movies have played well all around the world. But I don’t know if Akeem is the reason for that. Akeem is part of a body of work I see translating all around the world. So it’s hard to pull one character out and say, “This is the one.” I look at all of it together, and he’s part of my big picture.
Q I know a few years ago you talked about this period of your career being a bookend. How are you seeing this chapter in your career?
A To be perfectly honest, this whole patch of work I’m doing now started because I was on the couch for eight years. After 2011, I said to myself, “I’m taking a break from movies.” Then I just sat on the couch and I just started to enjoy it. I thought I was going to take a year or two off and it turned into eight years. Then I started feeling like I wanted to do standup again. So I thought that I would do some stuff that I was going to be into and that I knew was going to be funny. I had it all planned out. I was going to do Dolemite, then I was going to go back and do Saturday Night Live, then Coming 2 America and then a standup tour … That was the original plan. Then the pandemic hit and so we had to go put the standup on the back burner until the world gets normal again. Now we’re sitting on the couch, like everyone else, waiting for the pandemic to end, praying and hoping for a moment when all this is behind us and we can sit in a room together. That’s my immediate plan. I’m just looking forward to just being able to sit in a room with people and go to places. I’m not even thinking about what movie I want to do; I just want s--t to get back to normal.