‘Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal’
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“He showed a picture of me, and he said, ‘Hey, everybody, catch a falling star,’” Murphy recalled. “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?”
Murphy, who starred on SNL from 1980 to 1984, was particularly hurt because he felt the quip would have been approved by the show’s producer Lorne Michaels.
“I know that he can’t just say that. A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that,” Murphy said.
After a third Beverly Hills Cop movie disappointed at the box office the year before, Vampire in Brooklyn’s tepid reception from moviegoers stung. But Murphy told the Times he didn’t deserve to be mocked by cast members from a show where he had worked for four seasons.
“Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal,” Murphy said. “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.”
Spade opened up more about the diss, saying his Hollywood Minute act was his desperate attempt to carve out a bit that people would be talking about come Monday morning. He went after famous names, recounting how his first target was singer Michael Bolton.
“I was writing my dopey Hollywood Minute, my bread and butter and basically the only thing keeping me from going back out on the road doing shows at the Gut Busters in Omaha or working in the skateboard shop,” he recalled.
He then realized that Murphy had just released several recent films that failed at the box office. “I’m sitting in my dumpy office and I realized that Eddie Murphy had put out two back-to-back flops,” he wrote. “I think the two films were Harlem Nights and Vampire in Brooklyn. So, I casually write a joke about Eddie Murphy for my piece that week. You know the line. ‘Look, kids, a falling star! Quick, make a wish . . .’”
The gag didn’t seem to make much of an impression. “Especially because it’s buried in the middle of 10 or 12 of these rapid-fire sizzles that come and go quickly,” Spade wrote.
But Murphy called the show on Monday and demanded to speak with him. Spade wrote that he was “quietly s—-ing diarrhea into my Dockers” and declined the call.
When they eventually spoke later that same day, Murphy berated Spade. “’David Spade, who the f— do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. F—. Going after ME??’” Spade recounted. “‘You dumb motherf—er! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me. Talking s— about me??’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera … on and on and on and making me feel like s—.”
The slight caused Murphy to refuse to appear on SNL for many years. He eventually appeared briefly on a 40th anniversary special in 2015 and hosted an episode in 2019.
The two eventually patched things up and Murphy said in his interview with the Times that he has forgiven Spade. “In the long run, it’s all good. Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.”
But elsewhere in his chat with the newspaper, Murphy complained that the press was “relentless” in its criticism of him in the 1980s.
“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,’” he said. “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.”
Murphy returns to screens next month in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, set to stream on Netflix starting July 3.