‘I’ve Had a Charmed Life’
EDDIE MURPHY ON MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH, THE COLLEGE SNUB THAT LED TO HIS BREAKOUT ROLE AND THE ROYAL REUNION OF HIS NEW FILM, COMING 2 AMERICA
Eddie Murphy saw the future. “Around 15, I started saying, ‘When I’m 18, I’m gonna get famous,’ ” says the actor, who, a mere few years later, was cast on Saturday Night Live at age 19—and rocketed to fame as he predicted. He’s been making us laugh for four decades since: from 1980s movies 48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America to voicing Donkey in the animated Shrek franchise to starring in Dolemite Is My Name a year and a half ago.
Recently, he’s been retracing a greatest-hits arc. Having already won an Emmy for hosting a 2019 episode of SNL, he is now returning to his TV comedy standup roots and making movie sequels featuring some of his greatest roles. This month, he brings us Coming 2 America (March 5 on Amazon Prime), the follow-up to the original 1988 rollicking romantic comedy.
“I was a kid when I made that movie,” says Murphy, now 59, Zooming with Parade from the Los Angeles home he shares with his fiancée, Paige Butcher, 41, and their two children, Izzy, 4, and Max, 2. (Murphy also has eight other children and one grandchild.)
The original John Landis–directed Coming to America “was like a grown-up fairy tale,” he says. It was based on a character Murphy conceived when, he explains, he was feeling heartbroken over an ended engagement and began imagining the story about a prince searching for true love. Enter Prince Akeem Joffer from the fictional African nation of Zamunda, so weary of being surrounded by yes-women, he sets off and finds romance in the one place in America fit for a future king: Queens. “The new movie,” says Murphy, “tests that happily-ever-after.”
Coming 2 America, in which Murphy once again dons the prince’s royal robes, picks up three decades after the first and features other familiar actors from the original film, including James Earl Jones as Akeem’s father, King Jaffe Joffer; Shari Headley as Akeem’s wife; and Arsenio Hall as his trusted confidante, Semmi.
Being back on set with everyone was like seeing “a bunch of people you went to high school with, all of a sudden,” says Murphy. The new film also features plenty of fresh-faced newcomers, including Jermaine Fowler as Akeem’s long-lost son, Lavelle; Wesley Snipes as his nemesis, General Izzi; and Saturday Night Live’s Leslie Jones and Tracy Morgan; plus some ’80s-inspired cameos.
Born Funny
Murphy’s journey to comedy began in Bushwick, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. He was raised—along with his older brother, Charlie—by his mother Lillian, and his father, Charles, and later by his mother’s second husband, Vernon Lynch, in Roosevelt, Long Island. “I was always funny,” he says. “I grew up around a bunch of funny people.” As a teen, he was doing standup at Long Island comedy clubs and bars. His most famous bit at the time? “Boogers,” he says with a big laugh. “It was the guy digging in his nose and trying to get a booger off his finger, and all the sticky stuff—that was my killer bit.”
After high school, Murphy attended Nassau Community College as a theater major, for about a semester. Disillusion set in when for a college production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest he was denied the chance to audition for the starring role of McMurphy (made famous in the movie by Jack Nicholson). “They wanted me to play the Scatman Crothers role [the orderly, Turkle], and I was like, ‘Because he’s the only Black dude? I want to play the lead!’ I remember thinking, This is bulls--t. I would crush it! I was so pissed off.” Six months later, he was cast on Saturday Night Live. “I went back there,” he jokes with spiteful delight, “‘Yaaa, yaaa, yaaa! ’ ”
Fast Track to Fame
With years of standup already under his belt, Murphy quickly made his mark on SNL playing now-classic characters, including Gumby, Mister Robinson and Buckwheat. “I couldn’t have been in a better place than SNL—that’s the Harvard of comedy schools,” he says. From there, his career soared—fast.
By 2007, Murphy had earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Dreamgirls, but his spirit for filming features was waning—and in the comedies, he felt it was showing. “You can fake like you’re crying, and you can fake like you’re angry, but it has to really be funny,” he says. Around 2011, he took a six-year break to press reset. During that time, his fiancée, Butcher (together for 10 years, they’ve been engaged since 2018), gave birth to his two youngest children, and he was able to spend even more time with his family. “Most of my kids are big grownups now,” he says of his other children: Eric, 31 (with Paulette McNeely); Bria, 31, Miles, 28, Shayne, 26, Zola, 21, Bella, 19 (with ex-wife Nicole Mitchell); Christian, 30 (with Tamara Hood); and Angel, 13 (with former Spice Girl Melanie “Mel B” Brown). His granddaughter, Evie, 1, is his son Miles’ child.
When Murphy began working full-time again, he chose only projects that fully engaged him. “And that’s why Dolemite turned out the way it turned out,” he says of the 2019 biographical drama Dolemite Is My Name, based on 1970s blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore—a film that earned Murphy acclaim from critics, a Golden
Globe nomination and groans from his mom for the character’s crude language. “She hadn’t seen me talk crazy like that in years,” he says.
Thinking Positive Today, Murphy sees his future much as he did when he was a teenager. “Positivity, creativity, forward motion,” he says. He swears his favorite thing to do is just sit on the couch, watch TV and do nothing. But he’s often channeling his creativity, walking around the house with one of his guitars (usually his acoustic Martin) and playing. “I’m always writing a song,” he says.
Looking ahead, he is working on his first standup special in nearly 35 years. After that, he plans to join Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito for the Twins sequel, Triplets, and then shoot Beverly Hills Cop 4.
“I’m optimistic,” he says of 2021. “Everything’s fresh and new, and everything’s resetting.” He is focused, as always, on making sure his family is taken care of and that he lives up to his responsibilities. “But I’m not afraid of that,” he says. “I’m not afraid of anything. I’ve had such a charmed life.”
Visit Parade.com/eddie find out Murphy’s real-life connection to Egyptian royalty.