Eddie Murphy está cobrindo tudo em sua turnê de imprensa de Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

No início de uma longa entrevista ao The New York Times , Eddie Murphy falou sobre as maneiras como ele considerava sua fama garantida quando estava apenas começando. “Comecei talvez por volta dos 13, 14 anos, dizendo que seria famoso. Eu dizia para minha mãe: 'Quando eu for famoso...' Então, quando fiquei famoso, foi tipo, 'Veja, eu te disse'”, lembrou ele.

Claramente, parte dessa atitude arrogante permanece, apesar do enorme sucesso de Murphy desde então. Na entrevista, aparentemente destinada a promover Policial de Beverly Hills: Axel F , Murphy quase não falou sobre o assunto em questão. Em vez disso, os tópicos de conversa variaram desde sua frustração com The Golden Bachelor , até seu relacionamento com Marlon Brando, até a piada do Saturday Night Live que o manteve longe do Studio 8H por 30 anos. Aqui estão alguns destaques da conversa muito divertida:

• Murphy teve dois jantares com Marlon Brando, que aparentemente odeia Clint Eastwood: Depois do filme de Murphy de 1982, 48 horas. , o ator disse que Brando ligou para seu agente para marcar um jantar, o que levou a um almoço (para o qual Murphy estava atrasado) logo depois. Durante essas reuniões, o lendário artista chamou a atuação de “besteira”, referiu-se ao Poderoso Chefão como “eh” e insultou Clint Eastwood. De acordo com Murphy: “Ele estava dizendo: 'Não suporto aquele garoto com a arma'. Eu estava tipo, 'Que garoto com a arma?' Ele disse: 'Ele está no pôster!' Eu estava tipo, 'Clint Eastwood?' 'Sim, aquele cara!' Ele estava chamando Clint Eastwood de 'aquele garoto'”.
• Ele não consegue nomear uma música da Taylor Swift: ele também não acompanha nenhum ator de 20 e poucos anos. (Desculpe, Timothée e companhia.)
• Em vez disso, ele assiste “coisas nada descoladas”: as coisas em questão? Feudo Familiar , O Cantor Mascarado e O Solteiro Dourado . A propósito, ele está chateado com esse último. “Você sabe que eles terminaram ?” ele perguntou. “Que tipo de [palavrão] é esse? Eu assisti isso e pensei, 'Isso é tão legal, eles encontraram o amor na segunda parte de suas vidas.' Então eu descobri que esses [palavrões] terminaram três meses depois!”
• He also watches YouTube, but doesn’t “just go random on it”: His current rabbit hole is videos of a one-legged tap dancer from the ‘40s called Peg Leg Bates. “He lost his leg and he was undeterred, went out there, and he became a legend,” Murphy said.
• He’s pretty straight edge: Murphy shared that he’s protected himself as someone who got famous young, “especially [as] a Black artist,” by avoiding alcohol and hard drugs. At 19, he apparently said no to doing coke at the Blues Bar with John Belushi and Robin Williams, not due to “some moral stance,” but because he simply wasn’t interested. He also smoked his first joint at age 30 and had a good laugh about some gourmet jelly beans.
• He thinks The Nutty Professor is his best performance: “I like Bowfinger, but I could think of 20 other actors that could have played that role,” he said. “I can’t think of another person that could do Nutty Professor.”
• He thought David Spade’s SNL joke at his expense was racist: After his 1995 film Vampire In Brooklyn “flopped,” Murphy’s fellow SNL star, David Spade, made a joke about him being a “falling star” that Murphy didn’t appreciate. “It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re [expletive] with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that, yeah,” Murphy said. “‘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.” While he stayed away from the show for three decades after that, he said he’s cool with Spade and Lorne Michaels now.
• He’s “never had joy”: “The process of making a movie, it’s work,” he explained. While he loves being in scenes, he doesn’t love the “hurry up and wait” of it all. He also doesn’t “gravitate toward things that I think would be challenging” and instead “want[s] to do something I know works and something that I know I can be funny doing.”
• His dream project is a mockumentary called Soul, Soul, Soul: Murphy has apparently been “threatening” to make Soul, Soul, Soul, a “Zelig kind of thing, where it’s this guy who’s part of the rock ’n’ roll, R&B thing back in the ’60s and worked with everybody,” for years. He even created a trailer that both Donald Glover and the NYT interviewer David Marchese have seen and insist needs to get made. “[I]t’s so much work. That’s been the deterrent,” Murphy said. “But I tell you, one day I’ll do it.”

Beverly Hill Cop: Axel F premieres July 3 in theaters.