The Return of Eddie Murphy

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/the-return-of-eddie-murphy/616937/

Ed-die! ed-die! ed-die!” Standing before a bank of potted poinsettias in Studio 8H of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Eddie Murphy, the returning comedy hero, smiled serenely and took a few seconds to bask in the chant that had broken out. Then he spoke. “It’s great to be back here finally, hosting Saturday Night Live for Christmas,” he said. “This is the last episode of 2019. But if you’re Black, this is the first episode since I left back in 1984.” Cue applause and knowing laughter.

Ah, the warm wave of renewed appreciation. We’ve witnessed this phenomenon a fair amount in recent times. Keanu Reeves, how cruel we were to mock you back when you toured with your band, Dogstar; you are an honorable and decorous man. Winona Ryder, forgive us for forever pinning the transgressions of your 20s and 30s upon you—after all, you long ago moved on to better things and Stranger Things. Now it’s Eddie Murphy’s turn.

Murphy, who will turn 60 next year, was more than a star in the 1980s, the decade in which he emerged. He was a force, incandescent with live-wire energy from the moment he was given his first speaking part on SNL. Over the course of mere months in 1981, the year he turned 20, Murphy debuted soon-to-be-iconic recurring characters: Buckwheat, Mister Robinson, Velvet Jones, and the prison poet Tyrone Green (“Dark and lonely on a summer night / Kill my landlord, kill my landlord / Watchdog barkin’—do he bite? / Kill my landlord, kill my landlord …”).

It didn’t take much longer for a leading-man film career to gather momentum, with 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop coming out in rapid succession—’82, ’83, ’84—and for Murphy to concurrently ascend to the pinnacle of stand-up, with his 1983 album, Eddie Murphy: Comedian, going gold in less than a year and winning a Grammy. The LP’s companion HBO special, Eddie Murphy: Delirious, established what has come to be the lasting visual image of Murphy in his early-period pomp: a slim, handsome young man in a red-leather suit effortlessly commanding the huge stage of the 3,700-seat DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

What made Murphy’s rise so remarkable, beyond his youth, is that it was almost entirely self-powered: He talked his way into an SNL audition with no agent and no credentials from Second City, Groundlings, or any of the other prestigious comedy feeder schools; he survived the purge that eliminated all but two of the cast members from SNL’s disastrous 1980–81 season, the first after the departure of its creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, and the original cast; and he elevated every movie that he was in during those early years. None of the roles in that classic trio of star-making films was expressly conceived for him—48 Hrs. and Trading Places were developed with Richard Pryor in mind, and the titular protagonist of Beverly Hills Cop wasn’t even meant to be Black, let alone funny. But it didn’t matter. In those days, Murphy’s charisma, ingratiating smile, and unerring comic instincts could bring any leaden, cliché-stuffed screenplay to life.

So many times over the past couple of decades, Murphy has tantalized us, appearing to be on the cusp of a triumphant return to his ’80s form—to peak Eddie. For instance, in 1999, he delivered a terrific dual performance as a Tom Cruise–like movie star and his look-alike nebbishy brother in the first-rate comedy Bowfinger. And in 2006, he drew raves for his dramatic acting and his singing as the doomed, Jackie Wilson–like soul singer Jimmy Early in Dreamgirls.

But these intimations of artistic renewal never quite turned into proper comebacks. He didn’t get the props he deserved (he won a Golden Globe for Dreamgirls but was robbed of an Oscar), and/or he didn’t leverage the momentum, retreating into the haven of his profitable but formulaic Dr. Dolittle and Nutty Professor family-film franchises.

What’s happening in the current wave of renewed appreciation is a symbiotic event involving performer and audience. Murphy has made a conscious and fairly recent decision to whip himself back into peak-Eddie shape. His return to SNL was one part of a comeback portfolio that also includes last year’s Dolemite Is My Name, his best movie in ages, a biopic in which he stars as the lovably crude blaxploitation misfit Rudy Ray Moore. Netflix, which co-produced that film, is also underwriting Murphy’s return to stand-up, having contracted with him to record a concert special—his first since 1987’s Raw—once the coronavirus pandemic abates and Murphy is able to take his new material on the road.

Murphy has also completed the filming of Coming 2 America, a sequel to Coming to America, the award-winning comedy whose 1988 release marked the end of the peak-Eddie period.