Eddie Murphy doesn’t have fond memories of working on Saturday Night Live, and he still remembers when fellow cast member David Spade spewed a hateful joke about him on the air — several years after his exit.
The Coming to America star, 63, opened up on the Saturday, June 29 episode of The New York Times Magazine’s “The Interview” podcast, where he recalled one “racist” jab that Spade, 59, said during his “Hollywood Minute” sketch in 1995.
“Look children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish,” Spade had chuckled next to a photo of Murphy during the skit. The comment came after Murphy and Angela Bassett starred in director Wes Craven’s horror-comedy Vampire in Brooklyn, which bombed at the box office (though it is now often labeled a cult classic).
“It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re f–king with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that,” Murphy noted to The New York Times about the incident.
The Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F star appeared on the NBC comedy series from 1980 to 1984 while Spade starred on SNL from 1990 until 1996.
Murphy continued, “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,” he explained to the publication.
Eddie Murphy Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
“A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career,” Murphy said.
“Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal. It was like, ‘Yo, how could you do that?’ My career? Really? A joke about my career? So I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought — I felt it was racist.”
The You People actor returned to the SNL stage at Studio 8H to guest host in 2019, and he made an appearance at the show’s 40th anniversary celebration in 2015.
No longer live from New York! Saturday Night Live has catapulted the careers of many of today’s most popular comedians, including Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey and Adam Sandler. In fact, the NBC sketch comedy series has become a launching pad for hit talk shows, films, sitcoms and game shows since its 1975 premiere. […]
Despite his initial ire, Murphy has nothing but love for his fellow SNL cast members. “In the long run, it’s all good,” he explained. “Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Samantha Ibrahim Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL. I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.”
Elsewhere in his Times interview, he slammed the negative press he endured in the 1980s as he was building his acting career, saying that the media was “relentless on me, and a lot of it was racist stuff.”
“Just think about it: Ronald Reagan was the president, and it was that America. You would do interviews, and you’re like: ‘I didn’t say that. I don’t talk that way,’” Murphy recalled. “They would be writing it in this weird ghetto — I used to have weird [expletive] that would go on. Then I got really popular, and 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’d get cheap shots from your people.”