Eddie Murphy can dish it out … but can he take it?
The “Saturday Night Live” superstar is still sore about a joke dating back to the Clinton era.
The context? Murphy’s ill-fated “Vampire in Brooklyn” had underwhelmed at the box office that year. The horror-comedy hybrid, directed by Wes Craven, seemed like a can’t-miss project in 1995.
It missed, earning just $19.8 million.
The film’s legacy is stronger than that box office snapshot, but it hardly has the cultural cache of “The Nutty Professor” or “48 Hours.”
It was Murphy’s foul luck that “SNL’s” David Spade was hosting the “Hollywood Minute” at the time, a segment that took no prisoners.
Even, apparently, the show’s biggest alum.
“Look children, it’s a falling star, make a wish.” Spade cracked as a picture of Murphy flashed on the screen.
Murphy is still mad about the joke today. He told The New York Times why it stung so much. The gag came from “in-house,” he said, on a show he practically saved with his stardom.
“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. 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.”
Murphy’s signature stand-up special, “Delirious,” took sizable pot shots at Michael Jackson and gay people, the latter which could get him canceled if the woke mob set its mind to it. He’s been slinging jokes for decades, some good and some bad, and few actors could match his level of fame.
He revisits his iconic ’80s character on July 3 via Netflix’s “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.”
So why harp on one joke?
Murphy contends he’s since made amends with both Spade and “SNL” brass. Why would such a reconciliation be necessary? Should some stars be off limits?
Spade’s segment killed week after week because it never pulled a punch, even when it came to the show’s best-known alum.
There’s another problem here.
Murphy came of age in the 1980s, a time when racism still infected the country in ways we tend to forget today. His work often intersected with that reality, like his subversive bit in “Raw” about Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields.
He noted the King of Pop took Shields to the Grammys as his date and the culture collectively shrugged. Why? Jackson wasn’t seen as a sexual soul.
“If I took Brooke Shields to the Grammys, ya’ll would lose your minds,” he continues. “That’s because Brooke Shields would get [bleeped] that night,” he quipped.
Or, recall Murphy’s iconic “SNL” sketch where he donned “white face” and entered white society.
Funny. Subversive. Thought-provoking. It’s what Murphy once did better than anyone. It’s akin to Dave Chappelle in 2024, making both valuable voices even when you strongly disagree with them.
To play the race card against both Spade and “SNL” is both beneath a superstar like Murphy and unproductive.
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