'The Interview': Eddie Murphy Is Ready to Look Back

Eddie Murphy has been so famous for so long that it can be easy to take for granted or just plain overlook how game-changing a figure he actually is. As a stand-up, he was a total rock star. Eddie Murphy Raw from 1987 is the highest-grossing stand-up comedy film ever released. And he brought that sheer comedic firepower to TV, too, at the risk of overstating it. And I don't think I am. He can take pretty much sole credit for rescuing Saturday Night Live from its early-80s slump. But he made his greatest mark in movies, where he became one of the biggest stars of all time.

He reached new heights of popularity and bankability, especially for a comedian, and especially for a Black actor. He pioneered the action-comedy genre with movies like Beverly Hills, Cop and 48 Hours, and later he made classics out of family-friendly films, too, like The Nutty Professor and Shrek movies. Simply put, there is American pop culture before Eddie Murphy, and American pop culture after Eddie Murphy. And now he's returning to the character that sent his career into overdrive with Beverly Hills cop Axl F. It comes 40 years after the first film in the series, and Murphy is back as the wisecracking detective Axl Foley.

In recent years, Murphy's been a somewhat remote and enigmatic off-screen presence. But as I found out over the course of our two conversations, now is a good moment for Murphy to reflect on what he's accomplished. Spin some Hollywood stories, explain why stand-up doesn't appeal to him anymore, and reveal the dream project he's never been able to get off the ground. Here's my conversation with Eddie Murphy and just a heads-up here. Big surprise this episode has some pretty salty language in it.

You've been around working professionally for it's got to be close to 50 years if you include starting at stand-up. And I think, you know, because you've been around for so long and been successful for so long. People might take for granted just sort of how unprecedented your success was. Like when all that was happening and things were skyrocketing, like around the time of the first Beverly Hills cop, which I guess after 48 hours, you know, did you feel like you as a comedian, as a movie star, as a Black movie star, understood what it was about you specifically? That met the moment so perfectly?

This was just stuff that was happening and one thing had led to another. And I wound up on a movie set and I just went with it. And then when stuff worked and became hit movies, I was like, Okay, yeah, that's what it's supposed to be, right? I realize now. I was like, Wow, that was a trip, that it came together like that. Back then, I guess I kind of took it for granted.

After 48 hours, Marlon Brando calls my agent and wants to meet me, and I go to Marlon Brando's house and have dinner with Marlon Brando. And I was, you know, I was like, Okay, I guess that's what happens, you know, now, at this age, I look back and go, Wow, that's fucking crazy. The whole idea that, you know, your first movie, the greatest actor of all times wants to have dinner with you.

I went and hung out with him a few times, you know, but back then I just thought, Oh, that's the way it is. You make a movie and then Marlon Brando calls.

It was a time mix up and I came down like a half hour late. And he was waiting for me in the car. Brando was just sitting waiting for me. And we went to his house on Mulholland and I was just going on and on about the Godfather.

And he didn't even want to talk about the Godfather. He was like, Godfather, He was like, not just the Godfather. Acting, he was like, acting is bullshit, nobody, everybody can act, and so on, and so on.

And he had, this is how long ago this was. He was going and that kid, I can't stand, that kid with the gun, and I was like, What kid with the gun he's got? He's on the poster, he's got the gun.

That was like, Clint Eastwood. Yeah, that guy was like, that's how long ago it was, He was calling Clint Eastwood that kid.

Clint Eastwood is 93 years old. Now, that's how long ago it was.

That's on the scene that I'm, like, calling my agent going. Absolutely not.

Absolutely not, I'm so out of touch. I used to be so hip, I used to know who everybody was, and now there's just so much stuff. I ask my wife, Who's this person?

And be like, all that songs are the biggest thing in the world. I don't even know what's going on.

Yeah, cause I don't see my think of myself as a comedian at all. I think myself, Oh, really, yeah.

That's one aspect of of who I am, that I'm a comedian, but I see myself as a artist. I'm a super sensitive artist and I can dabble, I can express myself creatively in a bunch of different ways. I'm like, I play a musician and I write screenplays and, you know, and I sing, and I'm funny, and I just do a bunch of stuff. I do a bunch of stuff.

I don't just go, Oh, I'm a I'm a comedian. comedian is one one part of it. What do you mean when you say you describe yourself as a super sensitive artist? Like, I'm? I could pick up energy. I can tell what's like. If somebody has got something going on under their skin while I'm talking to them, I could feel that.

I'm super sensitive. If I walk in a room, I could tell who's getting ready to come over here and say something and who's trying to act like they don't care that I'm there. I feel all of that shit, that's why I hate going to award shows. The most horrible energy in the world is a room full of famous people going through their whole famous thing.

And you know who's the most famous and who's cool and who's and all of that energy going on, everybody acting and that I hate that feeling.

Yeah, um, just just to go back to what I was.

Well, it's a whole different world now. Like I used to have little periods where I'd be like, I'm going to do it again, and then I'm like, why? why am I going to do it? The closest I got to doing it again was right before the pandemic. I actually was like, you know, I'm going to do standup again.

Cause I did Saturday Night Live and I was like, let me go back in there since I did SNL. Let me go do one standup special and bring it all full circle. And then the pandemic hit and we were, you know, stuck in the house for two years and I wasn't going. Oh, when I get out of here, I want to do standup again. And now it's here's a good analogy. It's like somebody that was in the military, you know? And they were on the front line in Vietnam or whatever. And they got all these medals, cause they did all this amazing stuff.

But then they wolfed up and they became like a general in the army. So it's like going to the general and saying, Hey, you ever think about going back to the front line?

We'll have bullets whiz past your ear again. It's like, No, it's much easier just doing this.

I don't have something that I was sitting around for years. Well, actually, I do have things like that, but they're not.

I don't know if they ever would ever get made. They're like things, crazy ideas that I had. This one thing I've been threatening to do for maybe 20 years, called soul, soul, Soul. It's like this fake documentary that I'd love and everybody. Whenever I show people a material on it, I'll show people the characters.

We shot like this fake trailer and everything. They were like, Hey, when are you going to make this movie? And I'm like, I don't know, I want to make it, but I just can't figure out how to do it.

Yeah, where's my phone?

So he has 200 gold records sold 35.

He has 35 Grammys, six lifetime achievement awards. You're showing me a video. He's been inducted into the Soul Music Hall of Fame twice. The world knows him by a single, a double name.

Murray murray.

Soulitis I contracted, Soulitis, yes.

And I feel like only a few people would go see it, but they would laugh so fucking hard.

The ideal day for me is nothing.

I'd cut school and take the blanket and put it over the dining room table, and take the TV and put it under the table. And have, like, a little tent under there and have my little junk food and just watch TV. It's always been a home body.

You know, I watch every night, I'm not ashamed to say it, I watch every night at 6 o'clock, when I eat dinner. I watch Steve Harvey and Family Feud, and on Tuesdays, I watch The Masked Singer.

We do, my wife and I, we watch all those shows, the singing competitions and that kind of stuff. I'd be like, Nah, you ain't supposed to be watching no shit like this, then you'd be. You say, I wonder who that turtle is, it'd pull you in.

You'd be wondering who it is. Last year, I watched all of the Golden Bachelor.

Hey, they broke up too, you know, they broke up, I know.

Motherfuckers broke up three months later, the same old shit.

Let me compose myself. Okay, yes, so you're a sensitive artist. And I was thinking about just the other day. It popped into my mind how it was around the time of the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary show. And I don't know if....

You don't seem like a guy who was on Twitter. But Norm MacDonald posted this big story about how they were trying to get you to be on a celebrity jeopardy sketch for the 40th anniversary show. You didn't want to do it, but the thing he said that was interesting to me, or most interesting, was, you know, it's like everyone knew it would kill, but you know, for whatever reason, you didn't want to do it.

And the thing that Norm then said was Eddie doesn't need the laughs the way that the rest of us need the laughs. What is your relationship to the audience? Do you feel like you need something from them on any level?

And if the audience likes it, great, and if they don't like it, you know, I'm onto it. Everything is for everybody and I move on. A lot of comedians started out, as you know, kind of like the outsider type person who used their sense of humor to, you know, become an insider, become cool.

And I was never like, I graduated the most popular boy. I was a popular kid, and because I was funny, I was always like a really popular guy and stuff, so I wasn't. I'm not the needy needy comic. And they were always laughing from the very beginning.

The very first time I heard a crowd of people laugh was on a bus coming from McCarran Pool in Brooklyn.

And we're in the back of the bus. I might be like eight, nine years old. And when the person would get off a bus, I would do like the voice that that person is saying. When they got off the bus and I was in the back, doing it loud. Like, So, if a guy would look like a cop when he got off the bus, I would start saying, like, a cop's voice.

And I'm going to do so. And the people on the bus were laughing. every time a person got off the bus, people were laughing. I was like, Okay, who's he going to do now? And I did it all.

And when I got off the bus, the whole bus clapped. So, oh yeah, I was like eight, nine years old. That was the first time. I was like, well, I can make a crowd of people laugh, and then I was just that guy. So I never went through that period where you're trying to find, you know, what's funny about me, and trying to get laughs and bombing and all that shit.

And I didn't go through all that. They were laughing from the beginning, so I never, I was never a needy, needy comedian.

After 48 hours, Paramount gave me some five picture deal and at the time it was like crazy, like some five picture deal. For, you know, I think it was $15 million. And to us, that was like, I was set for life, so I wasn't. I was never like, I've never been, I've never been competitive, I never been. Oh, I got to try to outdo what they did.

All I wanted to do when I started doing comedy, I knew I was going to be famous, but all I wanted to do creatively was meet Richard Pryor and be funny. When I was on a fucking plane coming from Georgia, Richard Pryor was on the plane. That's when I first met him and I gave him my cassette of my first album. And I sat like two, three rows on the other side.

And I was watching the back of his head and he was laughing, he was laughing at my stuff, and that was. I could have died right there, you could have crashed the plane right there.

I'd have been like, that was to make Richard laugh. I made Richard laugh for real. You don't see Richard laugh a lot. Think about it, you never see Richard's real laugh. And it was Richard Pryor on the plane laughing.

He laughed like this.

That's a Richard Pryor laugh. He's really fun.

And I met Richard Pryor and Muhammad Ali, and they were wonderful to me. When we landed from that flight from Atlanta, Richard was like, Which way you going? and I was like, I'm going? And he said, Oh, he drove me home, drove me home to the place I was staying, and he was always cool with me. But Richard is old enough to be my dad, and Richard had substance problems and alcohol, he had all these demons and stuff.

We had nothing in common outside of the fact that we were both funny.

So that's what Bill Cosby had. Richard Pryor could look at me and see I was, oh well, he's my reflection. That kid is trying to be like me. So he wasn't threatened. Bill Cosby was like, Is this the new way it's going to be now?

They're going to be on stage grabbing a dick and talking crazy and all that. So he could come at me with all the language. But it was more. It's one at a time. And is this the new guy? He knocked me out the spot. That's what was going on back then, so they were competitive in that respect.

I wasn't even thinking about them like that, I was puppy dogging both of them when I met them.

The ceiling of the whole art form, you know, stand-up comedy, that's Richard, and the ceiling for, you know, with movies and stuff, is. For me is Chaplin, and I haven't seen anyone come along that was better than Chaplin.

People forget how big Bruce Lee was when I was a kid. To this day, I've never seen anyone have make the audience have a reaction like Bruce Lee would do when Bruce Lee movies, we would go crazy, Bruce Lee is. The only time I've been in a movie where they stopped the movie. And the projectionist would come out and say, Listen, y'all got to shut up and sit down. And we can't show the movie. They have to tell the audience to sit down. And Bruce Lee would drive us crazy.

And now, to this day, when I pull a gun out, I'm doing a Bruce Lee impression. That whole intense, whatever faces I'm making and all that shit is all doing my Bruce Lee looks.

I used to really dress like that on the streets.

That was totally in my Elvis trip. Then when I got older, it was like, Oh my god, Elvis wasn't cool at all. Elvis was going through some shit. Now. Michael, that whole red jacket thing in Thriller after Delirious went out in a red suit and all that. No shit. I'm not saying he was influenced, but I had on a red jacket before.

I think there really was a period where it felt like you were entering that level of phenomenon status, not just a star like the biggest kind of star.

I remember I was 19.

I went to the Blues Bar, it was me, Belushi and Robin Williams to coke out, start doing coke, and I was like, Oh, no, I'm cool. And every now and then, over the years, I would trip about that moment because I was really young and it would have been so easy to try some coke.

I wasn't taking some moral stance, but I just wasn't interested in it. And to not have the desire or the curiosity of it, I'd say that's providence. God was looking over me in that moment where I didn't make a left turn and just everything would have been different. So it's really when you get famous, really young, especially a Black artist, I liken it to.

It's like living in a minefield at any moment, you can step on a step on a mine at any moment. Something could happen that can undo everything, but I was oblivious to the fact that I was in a minefield.

You ever see apocalypse now?

And now this age, I can look back and be like, Wow, I came through a minefield for 35 years. Well, how do you make it through a minefield for 35, 40 years? Something has to be looking over you.

So you don't have people watching your back, and you don't have support groups, and you don't have any of that shit. You're just kind of in it, you don't have anybody you can go to and say, Hey, what about this? Well, you don't have any of that. So you kind of was just in it.

Yeah.

And I was like, let me see what all this shit? I took a hit on a joint and then I said, Okay. And there were some jelly belly, jelly beans, those gourmet jelly beans. And I remember taking the jelly beans and eating one and trying to guess with my eyes closed, which flavor it was. And we were just screaming with laughter.

Oh, now I see, now I get it, there's all of that shit, so it was cool in the beginning.

I could walk in a room and the person wouldn't even know it was me. I think that's my best acting, let's put it this way. I like Bowfinger, but I could think of 20 other actors that could have played that role. I can't think of another person that could do. Nutty professor.

To get to work with Steve Martin anytime I'm working with somebody that I really, really like, it's not challenging.

You even thought that some of them was challenging? I'm like, it wasn't challenging. What's challenging is when you're in a movie and the movie ain't shit, that's challenging.

That's challenging when you're sitting in the screening room and you see the first print of Pluto Nash, that's challenging. I remember the first time we watched Pluto Nash. I had my son Miles with me, he was probably about eight.

And just the director and my lawyer sitting there, and Miles was sitting there with me. And the whole movie goes, the movie's all soft and shit. Then, at the end of the very last music sting, it all goes to silence and my little baby son says, Corny, corny. And that was challenging.

You're a little baby, even the baby knows it's corny. We were just watching the other day, we were just watching the New Beverly Hills cop movie, and we're all watching it. One of my kids, while he's watching it, he knows for the first time, he's watching it, he's on his phone looking at shit.

He ain't paying, barely paying. No mind, you have to ask him if he liked the movie. I was like, Well, he ain't even watching this shit. He was doing some kind of math equation, too.

He stopped watching the movie, he was like, six times 27. I was like, Wow, he's doing math. during the movie. I actually told him, Hey, son, don't do math right now.

Watch the movie.

The one we did in 94. I didn't think the movie came out good. There's been 10 different scripts and a bunch of different producers. And we just tried for years and years and it just wouldn't come together until we got Jerry back involved, the original producer.

Because Beverly HiLLS CoP This whole action comedy genre starts with Beverly Hills Cop. Before Beverly Hills Cop, cops were really serious. Dirty hair. Go ahead and make my day. It was no comedy with the cops. Beverly Hills COP pioneered that.

Then all those movies that came out afterwards, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, and all those movies. All the cops then are being funny and having one-liners and yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker and all that stuff that starts after Beverly Hills cop.

Pluto Nash.

Pluto Nash might be the only shitty movie. I have a couple of movies that are soft and movies that's like, Okay, this movie is just okay, but it's not something that you're going to go see over and over again. But no flops, I used to call movies flop. Oh, this movie is a flop, and that movie is a flop.

I'm like, there's no such thing as flop. I remember because I've been in this business long enough to know that when I got in this business. There was no Black Hollywood and there was just a handful of Black people that were working in films. And just to get in a movie is an accomplishment.

I love that when we're on the set and we're trying to make it work and it's coming, you feel it clicking. I love that, but hurry up and wait. That's the movie business, and it is not fun, it is joy when the movie is finished and the movie worked.

Then there's joy.

Just being here, the chances of being born one in 400 trillion. Then when you add nuance to it and meet somebody. And where you wind up working and what you wind up doing, and whether you win the lottery, all the stuff that you add to it. You know what my life has become, and the life that I've had on paper wouldn't even happen, so I can't question and have to go. This is all the way it's supposed to be.

Even Black folks.

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Hi, Eddie.

You know, I want to ask you this, so, you know, I think I first got in touch with your publicist about trying to interview you four years ago, during the pandemic. And I think we got close and then it fell apart because we couldn't figure out how to do the photo. And then this past February, I got in touch and he's like, Yeah, you know, it might work out this time, you know? When he finally wrote me back and said, Okay, Eddie is up for this. And then he put in quotation marks, which I assume meant it came from you. As long as there are no cheap shots, and I was thinking, what kind of cheap shot would you be worried about?

There was no rappers, there was hip-hop, it was the 80s, and it was just a whole different world.

They would be writing it in this weird ghetto, I don't know what it is. I used to have really weird shit that would go on. Then I got really popular and then there was this negative backlash that comes with it.

It's like, I was the only one out there, It was like, I'm this young, rich, black one. Everybody wasn't happy about that in 1983..

Even Black folks, you get cheap shots from your people.

But when it came out, I remember Ebony magazine. Instead of talking about the movie and my performance and all that thing. They said, Maybe there'll come a day when a Black man can play a professor and he doesn't have to be nutty. I was like, What the fuck, that's a review of my movie, that's a review of that.

I play all these different characters and that's what you say about me, and it's us, and it's me. Yeah, that hurt my feelings, that hurt my feelings.

When David Spade said that shit about my career on SNL, it was like, Yo, it's in-house. I'm one of the family and you fucking with me like that. It hurt my feelings like that, yeah.

This is Saturday Night Live. I'm the biggest thing that ever came off that show. The show would have been off the air if I didn't go back on the show. And now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career. And I know that he can't just say that a joke has to go through these channels.

So the producers thought it was okay to say that. And you've never. All the people that have been on that show, you never heard nobody make no joke about anybody's career. And most people that get off that show, you know, they don't go on to have these amazing careers, you know? So I took it, it was personal, it was like, Yo, how could you do that to my career?

Really a joke about my career. So, yeah, I thought that was, you know, that was a cheap shot, and it was kind of racist. I thought I felt it was racist.

I went back to SNL. I'm cool with everybody, it's all love, but I had a couple of cheap shots.

You got to show them what's funny they don't know, and if something is funny to me, I've never, ever, ever had anything that made me laugh. That when I said it to an audience, the audience just sat there and looked at me. If I think it's funny, if I get that little feeling, like it's just a silly little feeling, like this is funny, it's always funny.

Then I have some other movie that will come up and I will go do it. That's the way it's been going for 30 years, almost. I just recently had that experience with Donald Glover. I showed him that little clip, the soul, soul, soul thing, and he was like, Yo, you got to make this movie.

How do we make this movie? And I was like, Hey, yeah, he could figure out a way and I don't know, but he was like, he wanted to do it.

You got to go get all these famous people. A lot of the people that I wanted to get in have passed away over the years. But you want to get anybody that's alive that was a soul artist, you got to get them in it. You got any old rockers?

You got to get all of them in it to make it seem like this. Murray is a real guy. It's a lot, a lot of work, but I tell you one day I'll do it, I'm going to do it one day.

Kind of just like to hang out at home, play music and stuff. But you're obviously like an intellectually curious guy, you're a sensitive artist who observes and feels things deeply.

So what is interesting to you in the wider world? I don't know science, climate change, politics. Are you interested in any of that stuff?

I have, like, you know, like, a week where I'll get picked up on everything and I'll turn it off at watch. You get totally detached from it. If you watch that shit every day, you go fucking crazy, you go crazy. And you can't be in the moment, you can't be in the moment.

Can't be in the present moment when you're off in that shit, and you're off in the computer and you're off doing it, reading about all the other shit. I'm trying to be right here all the time, this moment, this is the only moment that's real.

After you finish that, people on the Ed Sullivan show a lot, but he's amazing.

Guilty?

Some whole other shit. Wow. They found him guilty, that's crazy.

That's all they heard in my room, they would listen to the bug saying, God damn you be doin some serious fuckin'.

Do you remember that dinner?

You laid down the path for those other guys, you know, and maybe it didn't feel like that's how, you know. That was kind of the vibe in the moment. But do you understand what you mean to comedians like Kevin Hart and Chappelle and Chris Rock and Chris Tucker?

And the comic could sell out the arena, and the comic could be in 100 million dollar movies. It doesn't have to be, you know, a Black exploitation movie, it could be a movie that's accessible to everyone and all around the world. People are going to see it. Black Star.

And yeah, and I did say I was going to be famous, so this is what happens when you get famous. I took all of that for granted, but I was never like, Oh, yeah, you know.

I'm the shit. This just happened to me. I always felt like it was a blessing, there's no higher blessing. You make people laugh.

That's more than anything, it's more than making them dance and whatever, making them feel drama or whatever. You can make people laugh, that's the best shit ever. And to know and look around and see that. All the good things that came in my life, that came to me, all came from making somebody laugh.

That's a beautiful feeling.

Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, photography by Philip Montgomery. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew, and our senior producer is Seth Kelly. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Special thanks to Susan Vallett, Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Maddie Macielo, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schumann and Sam Dolnik.

If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to the interview wherever you get your podcasts. And to read or listen to any of our conversations. You can always go to Nytimes.com Slash the interview and you can email us anytime at theinterview at Nytimes..com. We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. When Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, about his decades-long fight to combat loneliness and division in America.