Eddie Murphy has long remained one of the most influential cast members to ever perform on Saturday Night Live.
Joining the cast at an integral time in the show’s history, Murphy single-handedly managed to ensure the iconic NBC sketch show survived into the 1980s and beyond, thanks in large part to his impressive acting skills and undeniable comedic sensibilities.
While Murphy wound up boosting SNL’s ratings throughout his four year tenure on the show, the 64-year-old comedian ultimately refused to return to the series following a distasteful joke at his expense.
After embarking on a successful career in 1980s Hollywood, Murphy had fallen on tough times in the early ’90s, thanks in large part to critically panned releases like Vampire in Brooklyn.
Joking about the film’s lack of success on SNL’s long-running “Weekend Update” segment, cast member David Spade showed a picture of Murphy and commented, “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish! You make a Hollywood minute omelet, you break some eggs.”
In Netflix’s new documentary, Being Eddie, Murphy recalled his initial reaction to the joke that led to his 35-year absence from Saturday Night Live.
“My feelings was hurt,” Murphy reflects (via Variety). “I’m from the same… It’s like your alma mater taking a shot at you — at my career, not how funny I was, calling me ‘a falling star.’”
“If there was a joke like that right now, and it was about some other SNL cast member, and it was about how f**ked up their career was, it would get shot down,” Murphy posits.
In Murphy’s view, the joke was something of a betrayal, causing him to hold a grudge against the sketch comedy series that helped make him famous for the following three decades.
“The joke had went through all of those channels that the joke has to go through, and then he was on the air saying, ‘Catch a falling star,’” Murphy says. “So I wasn’t like, ‘F**k David Spade.’ I was like, ‘Oh, f**k SNL. F**k y’all. How y’all going to do this s**t? That’s what y’all think of me? Oh, you dirty motherf***ers.’ I was like that. And that’s why I didn’t go back for years.”
Murphy ultimately returned to SNL for the show’s 40th anniversary in 2015, followed by a critically acclaimed guest hosting stint in 2019.
“I was like, you know what? F**k this,” Murphy says of his decision to return to the show. “SNL is part of my histor. I need to reconnect with that show because that’s where I come from. That little friction that I had with SNL was 35 years ago. I don’t have no smoke with no David Spade. I don’t have any heat or none of that with nobody.”
