Famed comedian Eddie Murphy is opening up about his feud with Saturday Night Live and why he felt betrayed by the hit series for poking fun at his career.
“It’s like your alma mater taking a shot at you. At my career, not how funny I was,” Murphy, 64, said in his new Netflix documentary Being Eddy, which premiered on Wednesday, November 12. “Called me a falling star.”
Murphy was a cast member on the sketch variety show from 1980 to 1984. After parting ways with SNL, Murphy went on to become a bona fide movie star. During his time on the comedy show, Murphy claimed that any joke made about a former cast member was instantly rejected.
“If there was a joke now about a former SNL cast member, about how f***ed up their career was, it would get shot down,” he recalled. “It went through all those channels that the joke has to go through and then it was on the air.”
Eddie Murphy Looks Back on David Spade’s ‘Racist’ 1995 ‘SNL’ Joke
Years after he departed SNL, David Spade made a joke about Murphy and his film Vampire in Brooklyn, a box office bomb at the time that is now considered to be a cult classic.
During the comedian’s “Spade in America” segment on Saturday Night Live in 1995, Spade held up a photo of Murphy and said to the audience, “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish.”
After seeing the segment, Murphy’s feelings were hurt.
“So I wasn’t, like, f*** David Spade, I was like, f*** SNL. That’s what y’all think of me?” he said in Being Eddie. “Oh, you dirty mother f***ers. And that’s why I didn’t go back for years.”
As for where Murphy stands with SNL and Spade now, it’s a clean slate for all.
“That little friction I had with SNL was 35 years ago,” he shared. “I don’t have no smoke with David Spade. I don’t have heat with any of that or nobody. So I was like, ‘Let’s go to SNL and smooth it all out.’ And so I did.”
Murphy and SNL buried the hatchet in December 2019, when he returned to host. Fans were thrilled to see Murphy reprise some of his classic sketchy comedy characters, including Gumby, Buckwheat and Mr. Robinson.
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Earlier this year, the Coming to America star made an appearance at SNL’s 50th anniversary special.
“I got on that show when I was 19 years old. So I went back and I saw all these people 40 years later. It was just a trip,” Murphy said of going back to SNL during a May appearance on Jennifer Hudson‘s talk show. “And it was a, how can I put it — I felt like I was part of something. That show was on for 50 years, you know, so it’s this American institution. So when you’re in the room, and you see all the different people that were part of the show, I had this really great feeling, like, ‘Wow, I’m a part of this show!’ It was a good feeling. I loved it.”
Murphy joked that it was a surreal experience “because everybody was real old.”
Being Eddie is available to stream on Netflix.
