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

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

David Marchese talks to the comedy legend about navigating the minefield of fame, “Family Feud” and changing Hollywood forever.

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. 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 to 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? No, and not even in retrospect. I'm 22 when I had to do Beverly Hills Cop.

And I'm 20 years old when I started doing 48 Hours. So now I look back on those times and I trip about how young I was. But back then I kind of took it for granted. This is 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. What do you think it meant for you for stuff to be blowing up the way it did? Like you said, you took it for granted, which, you know, in retrospect, like, that's a crazy, it's like, you're becoming the biggest movie star in the world, the biggest comedian. Like, yeah, this seems like it's going how it should. Like, it seems as if that would be something that could kind of be hard for someone to reconcile with who they are in some ways, because even at that age, you're still figuring out who you are, you know?

Yeah, but I knew, I started maybe around 13, 14, I started saying that I was going to be famous. You know, I tell my mother, when I'm famous, yada, yada, and I was always, so when I got famous, it was like, yeah, I told you I was going to be famous. Now, I didn't know how big it was going to get, but I knew I was going to get famous. Now, I didn't know how big it was going to get, but I knew I was going to get famous.

I was having, you know, like these famous people that I grew up watching on television, you know, wanting to have a meal with me. 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.

Do you remember that dinner? He see, I You make a movie and then Marlon Brando calls. Do you remember that dinner? I mean, I'm fascinated by Marlon Brando. I went to him. The very first time we were supposed to meet was at the L'Hermitage in Los Angeles. He came to the hotel and we had dinner at the up the top place at the restaurant on the top. Then the second time was at his house and he came and picked me up at the hotel. But I thought that it was at eight o'clock. It was a time mix up. And I came down like a half hour late and he was waiting for me in the car, ran over to sit and 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, eh, the Godfather. He was like, not just the Godfather, acting. He was like, acting is bullshit. Everybody can act and so and so. 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 guy 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. Are there folks that, you know, you see coming up and you think, I just want to, I'm curious about this person. Yeah, I'm around Brando's age like he was when he went to me. Is there some 20-year-old that's on the scene that I'm like calling my agent going, I don't know, 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 she'd be like, oh, that song's the biggest thing in the world. I don't even know what's going on.

You know, I just watched, there's a really good conversation with you and Jerry Seinfeld. It was for some Netflix event. And I think in that, you know, you describe yourself as like fundamentally you think of yourself as a comedian. And fundamentally me personally think I think of myself as a comedian. I said that. Yeah. Yeah. Does that sound wrong?

Yeah. Because I don't see my think of myself as a comedian at all. I think myself. Oh, really? Yeah. That's one aspect of who I am, that I'm a comedian. That's one aspect of who I am, that I'm a comedian. But I see myself as an artist.

I'm a super sensitive artist, and I can dabble. I can express myself creatively in a bunch of different ways. I play a musician, and I write screenplays, and I sing, and 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. Super sensitive. If I walk in a room, I could tell who's getting ready to come over here and say something. 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 who's the most famous and who's cool and all of that energy going on, everybody acting. I hate that feeling. Yeah. that energy going on everybody acting and did that i hate that feeling yeah um just just to go back to what i was kind of trying to lead towards with this the seinfeld thing where i understand sort of fundamentally you're an artist and not a comedian but i think the context was like you know he was kind of nudging you and the moderator was nudging you like you know when

are you going to do stand-up which i think people ask you you know, when are you going to do stand-up? Which I think people ask you all the time, when are you going to go back to do stand-up? That's a comic. I'm not a comic. I still do funny things and I write funny stuff, but I haven't been a comic since, you know, I was 27. Is that something that's still appealing to you in any fashion? 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. 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 it's like, and now it's, 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 because they did all this amazing stuff. But then they moved 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? Have bullets whiz past your ear again? It's like no it's much easier just doing this do you have a dream project like if you could snap your fingers and knew it was going to happen what is the movie that eddie murphy would want to make oh gee i don't know i don't have like a dream

project i don't have something i was sitting around for years. Actually, I do have things like that, but I don't know if they would ever get made. They're crazy ideas that I had. And 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 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. What would the fake documentary be about? It's about this guy who, it's kind of like Zellig kind of thing about it, where it's this guy who's part of the rock and roll and R&B thing back in the 60s

and did all the most and the biggest, and worked with everybody, and we never heard of him, but all those great moments in rock and roll, and he's attached to all of these things. He's a bitter artist, and yeah. Where's my phone? Okay, I'm going to break in here to explain what exactly is going on. So Eddie pulls out his phone and starts looking for something on it. Where is it?

Where is so, so, so? And then for the next three and a half minutes, Eddie Murphy holds the phone up to his computer camera and shows me this trailer for a movie that doesn't exist. to his computer camera and shows me this trailer for a movie that doesn't exist. Okay, so he has 200 gold records, sold 35, he has 35 Grammys, six Lifetime Achievement Awards for 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.

If you got a record player, you know Murray Murray. I can sing before I can talk. You reading scripture, Jesus? And the humor here, most of it is delivered in documentary-style talking head confessionals, and it's classic Eddie Murphy. I remember the first girl I had intercourse with. Oh, who was that? Yes, a little woman named Daisy. head confessionals, and it's classic Eddie Murphy. I have a dream. It's like it. It's going to be the name of my half. I have a dream. He liked the way that flow with a good hook. Then he took that and run with it.

You know what I mean? Wait, so how much of this have you made? It's almost over. I can't cry no more. That's where my soul is. I'll keep watching. He contracted soulitis. Soulitis.

You name it. I can crack the soulitis, yes. And that comes from singing soul for too long. My doctor told me if I sang another note, I could die. Soulitis. You get the idea. And like I said, this went on for a while. So let's skip to the end and get back to the interview. Yeah, so that's probably about 10 years old now. Well, I'd see that movie. Yeah, but we haven't been, I've almost, I'm telling you,

I almost made this movie a bunch of times. I've been right to where I was going to make it and then it's, yeah, no, not right now. I feel like it's so self-indulgent and I feel like only a few people would go see it, but they would laugh so fucking hard. When you're home and not working on stuff, you know, not making music or not writing, what's an ideal day for you? Nothing. I like to do nothing. I like a day where there's nothing.

And my kids, I can hear my kids, you know, wherever they're at. It's just quiet. I sit around and play guitar. The ideal day for me is nothing. Was it always like that? Yeah. When I was a little boy, when we would get in trouble, the punishment for my brothers was that they couldn't go outside. And when I got in trouble, the punishment was I couldn't watch TV.

I could go outside, but instead I would be sitting in the house crying because I couldn't watch TV. I loved to watch TV. My whole life was a TV watcher. 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 homebody. What do you watch now? Anything? I'm ashamed to say what I stuff just watch TV. It's always been a homebody. What do you watch now? Anything?

I'm ashamed to say what I stuff I watch now. Tell me. It's not hip stuff. 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 of singing competitions and that kind of stuff. I'd be like, nah, you ain't even supposed to be watching no shit like this. And then you'd be, you'd say, I wonder who that turtle is. That shit pull you in. You'd be wondering, 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. What kind of shit is that? Just recently. Three months later, I watched that shit and I was like, this broke up too. You know they broke up? I know. What kind of shit is that?

Just recently. Three months later, I watched that shit. I was like, this is so nice. They found love in the second part of their life. This is a nice show. Bravo. Then they find a motherfucker that broke up three months later. The same old shit.

Wait, I'm thinking of this because it's related to when you described yourself as sensitive. You know, I remember this is probably... I'm very sensitive. What do you watch? Family Feud? Golden Bachelor? That's how sensitive you are. As you know, I'm a very sensitive artist.

Really? So what do you watch? Family Feud. really? So what do you watch? Uh, family feud. Uh, wait, let me compose myself. Okay. Yes. So you're a sensitive artist. And I was thinking about just the other day, uh, 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, you don't seem like a guy who was on Twitter, but Norm MacDonald posted this big story about sort of how they were trying to get you to be on a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch for the, for the 40th anniversary show. You didn't want to do it. But, 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, 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? The audience, I never even take the audience into consideration. I'm like, this is what I'm doing. This is what it is. And here, and if the audience likes it, great. And if they don't like it, you know, I'm on to it. Everything is for everybody. And I move on. 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 and I wasn't I wasn't the 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 a 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. 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 and 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. It's like, oh, yay. 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 what's funny about me and trying to get laughs and bombing and all that shit.

I didn't go through all of that. They were laughing from the beginning. So I never, I was never a needy, needy comedian. You know, you said you kind of always had the audience's approval. You didn't have the needy comic thing, but at some point does the money become like the symbolic thing that shows your status in the world? You said the money showed my status? Yeah. Like the money that you were getting from Hollywood, you know? It's like, oh, this other person made this amount of dollars. I got to make this.

Or, you know, just the way you were written. No, I didn't have that either. 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 at 15 million dollars 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've never been oh i'm i gotta 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. 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. It was Richard Pryor on the plane laughing. He laughed like this. That was a Richard Pryor laugh when he was really funny.

But then he gave you a hard time later on. No, he didn't. Richard Pryor. When did Richard Pryor give me a hard time? Bill Cosby gave me a hard time. Oh, I thought Richard Pryor kind of gave you some attitude because he was competitive. But what Bill Cosby gave you a hard time about?

About being- About language and all that shit and all that stuff. Richard Pryor was always, that's a myth. Because I've heard people say before that Eddie and Richard Pryor didn't get along. Not at all. Richard Pryor was, he didn't become like a mentor or anybody, but he was my idol. I idolized him. My idols were Richard Pryor, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, and Elvis Presley.

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 are you going? I was like, I'm going, he said, oh, he drove me home to the place I was staying. And he was always cool. But Richard is old enough to be my dad. 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. And we had nothing in common outside of the fact that we were both funny. The craziest thing about Bill Cosby are like, oh, this is the new shit that's coming on. This is the new. So if there's some new thing coming on, that's a threat to whatever their thing is. 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 their dick and talking crazy and all

that. So he could come at me with all the language, but it was more, you know, it's one at a time. And is this the new guys that knocked me out the spot? That's what it 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. Did you ever see a performer, an artist afterwards that made you think, whoa, this is like, I have to wrap my head around this a little bit. What do you mean? In the same way that like you just described Cosby and Pryor being like, oh, Eddie Murphy's the new stuff. We have to like reckon with that. Was there ever anybody that you saw that made you feel like, huh, I got to understand what this person's doing?

Oh, you mean like someone that came after me that went to the next level and I was like, oh, no, never. I haven't seen that. That's a lot of people that I think are funny and all that, but I haven't witnessed the next level. 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. What did you take from him? I haven't taken anything from Chaplin. I haven't taken anything from Chaplin.

The only time I've ever tried to be like somebody on screen was Bruce Lee. People forget how big Bruce Lee was when I was a kid. To this day, I've never seen anyone 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 projectionists would come out and say, listen, y'all got to shut up and sit down because we can't show the movie. They have to tell the audience to sit down and come. 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 always wondered if Elvis was secretly the influence behind some of the onstage stuff you wore when you were doing standup. Elvis had a huge influence on me. The leather suits and raw. I'd come out, I'd have a scarf. And I was rolling like Elvis, too.

When we was on the road, I had a crew. And, you know, I didn't have the Memphis Mafia, but I had my little crew of dudes. It was the whole shit. And I used to dress the same way you see me dressed in Delirious. I used to really dress like that on the streets. That was totally on 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 and thriller after Delirious went out in a red suit and all that kind of shit. I'm not saying he was influenced, but I had on the red jacket before but you're not saying um but you know Elvis you just mentioned Michael Jackson you know these guys who who really achieve like the apex of fame you know Prince is another guy like that um I think there really was a period where it felt like you were entering that level of phenomenon status, you know, not just a star, like the biggest kind of star. Yeah, I went through all of that. tragic ends and you you realize like fame can't solve anyone's problems but it can really cause problems you know do you feel like you understand the pressures that present themselves to people at that level of fame that leads to to their lives getting so kind of warped in a way do you feel like

you have a perspective on that well i i uh those guys are all cautionary tales for me i don't drink uh i smoked a joint for the first time i was 30 years old but that's the extent of you know drugs as a some weed i remember uh i was 19 i went to the blues bar. It was me, Belushi, and Robin Williams. They took coke out, started doing coke. And I was like, oh, no, I'm cool. And every now and then, over the years, I'd 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, that 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 likened it to, it's like living in a minefield. At any moment, you can 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? Of course. I remember the Robert Duvall character and bombs are dropping next to him and he didn't see it.

That's what my life was like. It was like, all of this stuff is going on and bombing and totally oblivious. It's like walking through a minefield and not even realizing you were in one. And now this age, I can look back and be like, wow, I came through a minefield for 35 years in it. Well, how do you make it through a minefield for 35, 40 years? Something has to be looking over you. Why did you say especially for Black artists? What do you see as the difference there?

First of all, this business, it's not set up for Black artists. You know, it was a new thing. It was like, okay, the Black artist is usually the sidekick. The Black artist has the leading man, and it's in a business that's not set up for me. It's set up for some white dude to be in. 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, you know, so you kind of was just in it. And what were the bombs? Just everything. Imagine, just imagine being a young person and having the world placed at your feet.

Nobody's saying no, and everybody wants to be around you. You try all types of shit and get caught up in all kinds of stuff. That's what destroys people. Yeah. Wait, you tried pot for the first time when you were 30? Yeah, I was 30 years old. I was in this recording studio and everybody had left. And it was some, everybody used to smoke all the time.

It was a joint there. And I was like, well, a friend of mine, David and his wife Donna were there. And I was like, let me see what all this is. And I took a hit on a joint and I said, okay. And they 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 and it was like, oh, now I see, now I get it. of that shit so it was it was it was cool

in the beginning this is sort of a a random question but you know i just uh re-watched bowfinger uh which is the holly you know the hollywood satire you made late 90s which for my money is your best performance in a movie. And better than better than nutty professor. Well, I like, I like bow finger more. Yeah. See, but for me, there's no comparison, but I like bow finger, but nutty professor, the, the mother and the, that, that stuff is real. Those makeups that Rick Baker did, and when they turn you into another person,

you told there's no sign of me. I could walk in a room and a 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. Oh, but Bowfinger, you do the multiple roles too. Not quite the same. Yeah, but a lot of people could do that. But the question I had about it was, you know, it's to do with the idea of the challenge of the material.

Where I thought watching Bowfinger, you know, you're doing the nerdy character, then you're doing the action film character, and you're playing opposite Steve Martin. And it just seemed like that role was probably, you know, it presented a particular challenge. And Nutty Professor, too, what you just described, having to inhabit all these different characters. When you say challenge, what do you mean challenge? like both the challenge of playing the different roles and playing them credibly and the tonal challenge of you know doing the comedy that you know it's also sort of a pretty dark satire and in some ways and then also i imagine just the sort of uh like the competitive

challenge of then acting opposite another sort of comedy legend like steve martin um but then you know the challenges i don't see them is i don't gravitate towards things that i think would be challenging this is my question yeah i don't think if i don't think if something feels challenging i i'm like oh i want to do something that i know works and something i know i could be funny doing. And something like working with Steve Martin, that's somebody that you admire and think is funny. That's not challenging. That's exciting to get to work with Steve Martin.

Anytime I'm working with somebody that I really, really like, it's not challenging. Why are you more interested in the thing that you know is going to work? Because first and foremost, I'm trying to be funny for my audience. So you want to do stuff that you know is going to be funny for them. I still do all different types of things, even though I don't want to be challenged. I still do all types of things. I've done all types of things. 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 a director. And my lawyer's sitting there and Miles was sitting there with me and the whole movie goes, and the movie's all soft and shit. Then at the end, you have the very last music sting and right, it all goes to to silence and my little baby son says,

corny. Corny. And that was challenging. Your 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 my kids, while he's watching it, you know, for the first time, he's watching it. He's on his phone looking at shit.

He ain't paid, barely paying it, no mind. And you have to ask him if he liked the movie. I was like, well, he ain't even watching this shit.

And 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, wow, he's doing math during the movie? I actually told him, hey, son, don't do math right now. Watch the movie. So I just saw Axl F a couple days ago. You know, it's coming out 40 years after the first Beverly Hills Cop movie. What made you want to go back to that franchise now? We've been trying to develop another Beverly Hills Cop since 96. 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. Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry Bruckheimer, yeah. And Jerry, you know, he understood it the most because it's his movie. And it all came together.

Why was it so hard to figure out what the next Axel Foley movie should be? Well, if you look at the third Beverly Hills Cop, it just didn't have the emotional hook that the other ones have. Axl has to be fueled by, you know, one of his friends or somebody close to him is in danger or died or something. That's what's fueling the first two movies. The movie needs a great villain. And that's what Jerry brought all the elements back to it. It was his recipe. Because Beverly Hills Cop, you know, this whole action comedy genre kind of starts with

Beverly Hills Cop. Before Beverly Hills Cop, cops were really serious, you know, dirty hat, go ahead and make my day. It was no comedy with the cops. Beverly Hills Cop kind of pioneered that. Then all those movies that came out afterwards, you know, 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 kind of starts after Beverly Hills Cop. that kind of starts after Beverly Hills Cop. But, you know, what you were saying about how it just took so long for the right elements to come together for the new film,

and also how Beverly Hills Cop 3 didn't really work, it sort of is reminding me, I was just reading this book that Steve Martin did, and he said he basically doesn't want to make movies anymore. He made 40 movies, and he had to make 40 movies to get five good ones and he kind of just didn't you know sort of lost his juice for it um does that sort of resonate for you like it actually is really hard to make things more good yeah but i have more than five good ones though

i feel like i have maybe five or six bad ones. You know, Pluto Nash and... Pluto Nash might be the only shitty movie. I have a couple of movies that are soft. The 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. It's just... But no flops. I used to call movies flop.

Oh, this movie's a flop. That movie's 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 it was just, you know, a handful of black people that were working in films. And just to get in a movie is, you know, an accomplishment. is an accomplishment. And you feel like you still have the,

like the joy has never diminished or the pleasure in the actual process of making the stuff? I never had joy. There never was joy in the process of making a movie. The process of making a movie is, it's work. You have to get up early in the morning and then the actual being in the scene, that's like a small part of the day.

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. Yeah.

As far as the process goes. Yeah. As far as the process goes. And I never lose sight of the fact that there's no flops because this is a blessing. Just to be able to do this for a living is a blessing. You referred to the term providence earlier in the conversation. And also when we were talking about sort of avoiding the bombs, you know, that you said, somebody's looking out for me. Do you ever wonder why you? You know, I asked that question to Richard Pryor when I first met him in the car, and he said, you can't think like that, Eddie. He said, look at that bum over there. There was a bum walking

down the street. He said, he's wondering why him. It's like, you can't even, you can't think like that. Just being here, you know, the chances of being born, one in 400 trillion. Then when you add nuance to it and all, you know, 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. After the break, I give Eddie a call back for some more stories about Hollywood and why his early days there weren't always easy. I was the only one out there. I'm this young, rich, black one.

Everybody wasn't happy about that in 1983. Even black folks. Hi, Eddie. Hey, what's up, man? You sound mellow. I'm a mellow guy. All right, good, good. 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, you know, it might work out this time. And I, 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? Well, I wasn't worried about anything. I say that before I do any interview. No cheap shots. It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing that I say. Do you feel like you've taken a lot of cheap shots from the press over the years? Oh, wow.

Back in the old days, they used to be relentless on me. And a lot of it was racist stuff, you know. It was a whole different... There was no black Hollywood. There was no rappers. And there wasn't hip-hop. It was the 80s. And it was, you know, just a whole different world.

Can you remember any examples? In what way was it racist? Just think about it. It was the, you know, Ronald Reagan was the president. And it was that America. He would do interviews and be like, I didn't say that. I don't talk that way. 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. 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. Did it hurt? You know, I remember when Nutty Professor came out.

This shows you how nutty. It's not even that long ago that I got a cheap shot from my people. And for the most part, everybody loves Nutty Professor. But when it came out, I remember Ebony Magazine, instead of talking about the movie, my performance and all that, 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 the review of my movie? That's the 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 like, you know, 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. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. He made some comment like about your, a couple of movies of yours flopped or something like that. And then, and then you didn't. One movie. No, no, no, no, no, no. Vampire in Brooklyn. It came, it came out and it was, and that it flopped. He showed a picture of me up on the news and he said, Hey, everybody, catch a falling star. And it was like, Wait, hold on.

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? What? 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. And then you stayed away from the show for a long time after that. 30, what, 30 years or some shit.

In the long run, it's all good. It worked out great. I'm cool with David Spade, cool with Lauren Michaels. I went back to SNL. I'm cool with everybody. It's all love, but I had a couple of cheap shots. You know, one thing I wanted to ask you, when we were discussing sort of how you think about your relationship with your audience, and you said that, you know, you kind of just approach it from the perspective of, you know, you're going to make what you think is good and what you think is funny, and hopefully the audience likes it. And you also said that, you know, you don't really think about work in terms of seeking out challenges.

Like you're looking to do the projects that you're confident will succeed. And I'm wondering if you can help me understand that a little bit more because it feels- Did I say succeed? Did I say succeed or work? Well, I think the word you used was stuff that will work. Yeah.

Yeah. But don't you have to think about the audience's needs in order to have a sense if something is going to work or not? How could you think about the audience's needs? Eight billion people on the planet. And no two people are having the same experience. And they don't know. The audience doesn't.

That's a better way of putting it. The audience has no clue what's funny. You've 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 that silly little feeling, like this is funny, it's always funny. So why can't you get soul, soul, soul made then? You obviously think it's funny. Probably other people will think it is funny. It's always funny. So why can't you get Soul, Soul, Soul made then? You obviously think it's funny. Probably other people will think it's funny.

I've almost made Soul, Soul, Soul a bunch of times. I'll get right up to it and then I'll be like, this is too self-indulgent. Nobody's going to go see this. I put a whole lot of work into it. Ten people will be laughing real hard. I'll have some other movie that will come up, and I would 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 so-so-so thing. He was like, yo, you've got to make this movie. How do we make this movie? he was like, yo, you gotta 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.

How many people have seen that trailer? Not a lot of people. It's like an inside thing. I'm privileged. I think it's very telling, though. Like, surely you, of all comedians and comic entertainersers have earned the right to make a self-indulgent project. Why not just do it? to come up with all of this stuff and shoot all of this stuff,

do all this, a lot of work. It's like doing a, a nutty professor movie. You got to go get all these famous people. You got a lot of, a lot of the people that I wanted to get in there passed away over the years. We 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. You also described an ideal day for you. And you said that an ideal day is a day where you basically do nothing. You said you don't really, you know, read newspapers, you know, kind of just like to hang out at home,

you know, play music and stuff. But I, you know, 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? 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? Oh, no, you know, I'll turn on CNN. I have like, you know, a week where I'll get up on everything

and I'll turn it off and 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 i mean you're off in the computer and you're off doing it reading about all the other shit i I'm trying to be right here all the time. This moment, this is the only moment that's real.

Do you spend any time on the internet other than reading news now and then? I don't go on the internet. I'll go and watch YouTube and I don't just go random on it. I'll ask something specific. Like, you know, Peg Leg Bates. You know who Peg Leg Bates is?

No, who's Peg Leg Bates? I'm glad you don't know. Go you what. Peg Leg Bates. You ever heard the expression, taking your lemons and turning them into lemonade? Yeah, of course. Peg Leg Bates is the personification of that. Peg Leg Bates is a one-legged tap dancer from the 40s, I think.

And he was, you just Google peg leg. You Google after you finish. He was on the Ed Sullivan show a lot. But he's amazing. Eddie, this is going to date the interview a little. It'll be old news by the time this runs, but Trump was just found guilty

in the hush money case. No. Guilty. Mm money case. No. Guilty? Mm-hmm. Wow. I did not see that. I did not think that was going to happen. All counts.

And how about this? I don't think it's going to affect the election at all. You don't think so? No. This is some other shit we've never seen, but we've never seen anything like this. There's some whole other shit. Wow, they found them guilty.

That's crazy. Do you have time for a couple more? You want to split or what? No, I'm cool, man. Oh, good. I appreciate it. Fucking Trump. Wait, oh, here's a good one. There's an old interview that you did with Spike Lee in Spin magazine.

I want to say from like early 90s, late 80s, something like that. And in there, you say that you believe the government bugged your house at one point. Why did you believe that? Well, we found a little microphone in my house, in my bedroom. Did I say the government? Somebody put a microphone in there. I don't know who.

Why would they have done that? Who even knows? In the 80s, all they heard in my room was serious fucking going. That's all they heard in my room, they would listen to the bug saying, God damn, you be doing some serious fucking. Oh boy, I don't, you know,

it's hard to segue from that one. If they had a bug in my room in the 80s, they had no shit they could play over. All right. Let me go here. You know, I heard Kevin Hart tell a story on Howard Stern's show. He talked about a dinner that I think maybe Dave Chappelle organized. It was Kevin Hart, you, Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle. And in Kevin Hart's recollection of it, it's kind of this lovely moment where, you know, you're all sharing stories and I guess trading jokes, but really,

it was kind of about sort of showing their respect for you. Do you remember that dinner? Yeah, I remember it, but I don't remember being the focal point of the table. Well, but he really put it in terms of you laid down the path for those other guys. 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? was that the comic used to be, you know, the sidekick and the opening act. And I changed it to where, you know, the comic can be the main attraction. They thought of comics one way, and it was like, no, a comic could be this, and the comic could sell out the arena, and the comic could be in $100 million 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, you know, one of the other things that stuck with me from our first conversation was, you know, you described just the plain fact of getting to do what you do for a living as a blessing. And I was thinking about that sort of in the context of, you know, also how you said you knew you were going to be famous. You knew. You didn't think it, you knew it. And then also, you got so successful and so famous so quickly that I think you had said, you know, you took the success a little

bit for granted. I'm curious, when did you stop taking success for granted and start seeing your career and your life as a blessing? Wow. I think I knew it was a blessing from the beginning. I took, you know, how fast everything was moving for granted. Like, oh, yeah, I guess this happens for everybody, you know. It happens like this, and yeah. And I did say I was going to be famous. So this is what happens when you get famous. So 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.

That'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, man.

That's Eddie Murphy. Axel F. will be available on Netflix July 3rd. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Corey Schreppel. 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 Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Susan Vallett, Rory Walsh, Renan Barelli, Maddy Maciello, 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 theinterview. 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. I've been working for most of my adult life, and maybe even longer than that, to try to build a better, a more productive, more equal, more connected community in America. And now I'm 83 and looking back, and it's been a total failure. I'm David Marchese, and it's been a total failure. I'm David Marchese and this is the interview from The New York Times.