Eddie Murphy is still seething over a 1995 joke on Saturday Night Live about the decline of his Hollywood career, delivered by cast member David Spade.
In a new interview with the New York Times, the 63-year-old Murphy recently opened up about the “cheap shots” he feels he suffered from the late-night comedy series, where he became a breakout star in the 1980s.
But it isn’t just the “racist” joke that sparked his long-running feud with David Spade. Murphy feels he has been unfairly treated by many of his former co-workers.
Murphy went on to insist that it was a “while different world” when he was shooting to stardom and he had little support from the industry’s establishment players. And when Spade joked that Murphy’s career was over on the very show the 48 Hours star felt as if he saved, it was a cruel cut, indeed.
“Back in the old days, they used to be relentless on me, and a lot of it was racist stuff,” Murphy said, adding that, “there was no Black Hollywood. There was no rappers, hip-hop. It was the ‘80s.”
Murphy was a featured player on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and, at the time, helped revitalize the long-running sketch comedy series. Yet only ten years later, that very same show was cutting him down.
That cut appeared during a skit called the “Hollywood Minute” when cast member Spade showed a photo of Murphy onscreen and then joked, “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish.” The jab came on the heels of Murphy’s 1995 film Vampire in Brooklyn, which did not do well at the box office.
The Beverly Hills Cop star said he was stunned when Spade threw a dig at him. “It was like, ‘Hey, hello. This is Saturday Night Live, I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show. The show would’ve been off the air if I didn’t go back on the show, and now you have somebody from the cast making a crack about my career?”
Murphy was also shocked that SNL’s producers gave the OK to use the joke.
“It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house!'” Murphy exclaimed. “I’m one of the family, and you’re fucking with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that.”
“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,” an aggrieved Murphy said. “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.”
Murphy also insisted that there was a racial element to it all, as well.
“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 racist, I thought — I felt it was racist,” he added.
For his part, Spade spent years being defiant over the feud, telling Murphy to “let it go,” but in 2015 he finally admitted that he had come to understand how hurt Murphy felt over the slam and said he felt bad about being the tip of the spear for people to turn against the actor.
“I try not to think of the casualties when I do rough jokes, but there are consequences sometimes. I know for a fact that I can’t take it when it comes my way. It’s horrible for all the same reasons. I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one. Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans,” Spade wrote in his 2015 memoir, Almost Interesting.
Ultimately, though, Murphy says he has buried the hatchet with both Spade and SNL. The Shrek star did note that he returned to the late-night show in 2015, saying, “In the long run it’s all good, worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade, I’m cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL.”
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