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All right, let's do the show.

Lock the gate. All right, let's do this, how are you? What the fuck is what the fuck buddies? What the fuck? And here's what's happening. All right. You holding up OK? You're locked in if you're new to this show, this is a good day to be here. Eddie Murphy is here. Why talk to him and the recording of that is here. A couple of things before we get to Eddie. Before I set that up, I.

I don't know if I want or not. OK, I'm recording this the day before the Critics Choice Award. So today those results would be out.

So what I'm going to do now. I tell you how I'm feeling heading into that, because I have to do that show from my dining room. Here's here's how it's been set up to me.

And if any of you watched it, you'll know maybe I don't know what the fuck I could I could have a heart attack shortly after I record this, but it was going to be I think it was me and Peyton and Hannah.

And Fortune and Michelle, Jerry Seinfeld, do you need last names, Patton, Oswald, Fortune, Fiester. And gets Gatsby, Michelle Bacto and me and Jerry Seinfeld, I'm nominated for End Times Fun, I'm proud of that.

Took a long time to put it together. It's a beautiful, beautiful, special, collaborative effort by me and the late, great Lynn Shelton, who directed it.

But I never win anything. I'm going to be doing stand up comedy professionally.

That means making a living at it one way or the other for thirty three years come August, this August. So add another three or four to that ish. From starting out, so 37 years, 36 years I've been doing this and the only real award I can remember winning from my stand up comedy was coming in second place in the BBC's comedy riot.

In nineteen eighty eight, and that's what started me working. That was the last time I think I won a prize for my stand up of of any value. I'm prepared to lose and I'll be I'll be there on camera losing, so you will you will have seen that. And if I win, it would be it would break a historical losing streak for me and any sort of award. So that's so that's where I'm at. I'll tell you. I'll let you know how I feel after the show on Thursday.

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They sent me a bunch of soap. A lifetime supply of Bronner's soap. And the book, so look, Eddie Murphy, there was a time when we were younger, all of a sudden there was nobody, nobody bigger than Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy was the biggest star in the world for a long time. Nobody was bigger than Eddie Murphy. And I don't even think we remember when the media and entertainment universe was smaller, what that meant. But those first few movies like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours Trading Places, SNL Delirious, the comedy special, Huge Global Domination.

And the truth is he has stayed a vital part of show. He's had a career in show business for, what, 40 years or something. But but the interesting thing about him. You know, outside of him being naturally fucking hilarious, and then there was those years where people were like, people are always like, is he still funny?

Is it going to be funny? Is he going to act funny that Simon shows? Would he act funny even back in the day? He would make a choice whether he was going to act funny or not, what he would and wouldn't do. However, he felt sometimes he was sort of dick ish about it and sometimes rightfully so. I mean, I watch a lot of stuff just to get Eddie in my head. And it was just very interesting to see him on old Johnny Carson clips where his talent and his his sort of demeanor was so huge.

He was so effortlessly funny and he was so sort of at odds just naturally and for, you know, personal reasons and probably for racial reasons with the entertainment industry in a way, just to see him with Carson and to see Carson trying to goad him into doing a Bill Cosby impression.

Just Eddie, sort of like not going to do it and deciding he wouldn't do it just because he didn't feel like it.

He didn't want to be told what to do. It really was reflective.

Of of the sort of weird expectation there's he definitely played with the racial expectation of black entertainers at that time, you know, on several appearances on Letterman, on Carson, where they would constantly get him to try to do impressions or they would ask him what he does with his money.

And he brought to it to their attention that these were specifically questions that were unique to black guests.

And why him? But it was also I don't think anybody knew what to do with a guy who became that big a star so quickly. But the bottom line is, man, is he had the goods. He had effortless. We had the fucking goods, man. And he could riff like Robin. He was quick. He could do voices. He could mimic. He could do quick jokes. He had a long, sort of deep reservoir of references.

And he just wouldn't play the game if he didn't want to. He didn't give a fuck zero fucks.

It was sort of fascinating to see him kind of arc and just sort of continue to be part of show business, but not be as necessarily himself as he used to be or what we knew him to be when he was young.

He's only a couple of years older than me. He's got 10 kids. So heading into this thing.

I didn't know how I was going to do it because it's a big it's a big, big career, big personality. And he don't really know. I didn't really know, you know, who is Eddie really? And and is going to be funny. He's going to be funny. Is he going to be detached? I didn't know.

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Better help dot com slash WTF visit, better help dotcom slash WTF and join me. Over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced better help professional. OK, all right. So the way that I dealt with Eddie. Was I was going to deal with him as a comic. He was a comic, he was a real comic, he was a guy that wanted nothing more than to do comedy all his life.

And although his two comedy specials, Delirious and Raw, are definitely very different in tone and different different in terms of where he was with his ego and with his success, but he was the real deal.

And he was he was doing comedy when he was like 16 years old. So I thought I talked to Chris Rock years ago about him and just about his time at the comic strip, his time doing those gigs in New York and Long Island, Florida. Yeah, he was a 17 year old kid who had a gift as a comic.

He had a depth to it that was almost a prodigy like and he knows who his heroes are. This is a kind of an amazing conversation about people we both knew, people that he revered, you know, Richard Pryor specifically, and, you know, his experience around that.

But, you know, just also just kind of. Yeah, I did. I'll be honest with you, before we head into the interview, I did try to, you know, kind of figure out what he was, why he had a chip on his shoulder when he was at the top of his game.

But, you know, he didn't really see it that way. So there is a little bit of persistence on my part around that, because, you know, I I like to connect around the anger.

You know, this is a great conversation. And I was just so thrilled, to be honest with you. Like you never know. Like I said, I think I told you this the other day, you know, back in the day when we were doing this at the house, you know, I'd get to talk with the guys, talk with the ladies, whoever was on hishe them.

And, you know, they'd come to my house, we'd warm up a little bit, and then we get into it. But you never know. With the Zoome, you get on, you do the tech thing, make sure everything's tight and then you get into it. So how do you connect? And I tell you, man, you know, Eddie got on and he was in his house. He's in a room with wooden, like painted wood, beautiful wooden walls.

There were some candles behind him and he was in this black this red seating arrangement. And he was just sitting there and it was very specific to me. So what I'm referencing at the beginning of this is because that was the image I was looking at, Eddie sitting in a red upholstered seating situation that I couldn't see the edges of behind him, just this stained, beautiful old looking wood wall of wooden panels and candles. And that's that's how he came in.

And and and this is how I came in. So. This is me talking to Eddie Murphy. The movie is that he's promoting is coming to America with the two coming to number two America. That's the sequel. It's now streaming on Amazon Prime video. Also toward the beginning of this, I mentioned Richie to him, and that's his old manager, Richie Tankan, who just passed away last week. And here we go. Enjoy me and Eddie Murphy.

As for how are you doing, Eddie, good, how are you? I'm OK, man, it's nice to see you. Yeah, same here. I've noticed in some of your other interviews that the candles were lit behind you, but I guess not today. It's OK.

And the candles he made, he made mention of it.

He said, I noticed the candles were letting me up, that I don't need the candles, I don't need them. It's not video. Now now you have to put them on and you have to put them on, because if you didn't if you didn't want them, you wouldn't have said anything.

I just didn't know if they were real. Someone said that they were like a light. But it's a real candle, huh?

Yeah, they just burnt down really low.

Isn't that petty of me? I'm like, hey, you know, I saw you on Fallon and the candles were lit. What the fuck is that about? What am I? Nothing? I don't even get a candle? Where's my fucking candle?

Or I can blow dry candles if we don't make it.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Tomorrow morning. Do you have a what kind of were you sitting do you have a steakhouse at your place?

I you know, you just asked me, where are you sitting? Do you have a steak house at your place? No, this is this is the lounge. There's a bowling alley here. Really. Really. And this is the lounge right by the bowling alley. So it's both. Oh, how many lanes you got to two lanes open to the public or just private or not as well as private.

Do you have to rent shoes over there? What you got going on over there? The shoes come complementary with with your steak.

How are you feeling. What's going on with the how much material did you have in place before you had, you know, put the kibosh on that tour you were going to do?

How much material I mean, were you working shit out or what?

But we I think we have to use the word material loosely. It's not it's not like I write. They have a conversation. You say something funny is working out. Just go try it out at the club. Yeah, well, now I'll just you know, when that happens, I just say it in the phone. Yeah, I have. You know, so I probably get, you know, two, three hours of, you know, one, two, three line premises I have to give some structure to.

I don't want to be presumptuous. I think you should just release those phone memos.

I mean, I, I think that you just have you going is dogs and you know what I'm saying.

And dogs and men with the dogs and man, it's going to be you ever get so far away from those no notes where you don't even know what the fuck you're talking.

Oh, yeah. Well, you find that the perfect example is a man that's five years later found something, said mayonaise. What the fuck was mayonaise important at the moment? Yeah, it was going to kill. That was going to be my killer beat. Back to the point. Well, you wrote it down. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, I do that too. I just make the outlines. I don't write the jokes. I just do the the trigger words, you know, the, the button words now like, oh OK, I'm going to remember that that's from doing stand for years and years and years.

Well yeah, but that's always how I did. I was sorry to hear about Richie. I don't know how close you guys were about. Sorry to hear about that.

Oh yeah. I heard about that the other day. Erm and he's part of my, you know my history for sure. Yeah. Right he was.

Oh. Do you remember meeting that guy. Oh yeah. I remember, you know back in the early 80s, the late 70s, a comic strip.

So where you were you grew up where I grew up.

I was born in Brooklyn. Right until I was eleven. Then I moved out to Long Island. Roosevelt, Long Island. So what was the deal out there?

I mean, were you like when did you start getting involved with, you know, knowing that the comedy was the thing, that comedy was the thing back then?

It wasn't it was not thing. It was like in New York, you had to catch a rising star.

Yeah. Improv. Yeah.

In the comic strip. And that was in in the city. Yeah. Long Island. You have nothing.

It was no comedy clubs. There was one club called there was a dude back in the seventies, this Richard Nixon lookalike named Richard Nixon.

It was a guy and he had a comedy club on Long Island. He did Richard Nixon's White House in. And on Wednesday nights, he would have comedy nights. And we would that's. I started working out there. You did? When I was about sixteen.

And that was the only joint govenors was no or no governors.

It was not there was no East Side Comedy Club. None of that stuff was at the man.

I remember going to governors the last time I played governors. You could still smoke in there. Yeah, I just never played Governor.

What was the other one too was a rap place. We used to play my father's place. Yeah. Oh yeah. I reject Spierer jiru it was there every week.

They had had their time so it was just you and Charlie.

No Charlie was doing stand up back but I mean you. The only sibling, just the two. Oh, no, no, I have one have a younger brother who's like six years younger. Yeah, what's he do? We have we have different dads. So his name is Lynch. Oh, OK. What's he do? He's a bunch of different stuff. He's a martial artist, trained. His son is a boxer. He trains him, he does a he does a bunch of different things.

So. So Lynch Vernon Lynch was your stepfather. Yes. Yeah. But I don't like to say that because he kind of raised me from when you were a kid, right? Yes. He's your father. Yeah, my dad.

And how close is that version of him that you did on Delirious?

How how close are you know, it's the trip. My dad was like that when we was young. And because of that sketch show that whenever I would do that him on stage. Yeah. Nobody would be laughing hard than my mother because it was true, because my dad had a drinking problem. Right. Be like, you know, 10000 people and my mother would be screaming. And because of that, my dad stopped drinking.

Really actually he stopped drinking because of those bits. Well, that's funny, but yeah, he was a lot like he was just like that. Oh, my God.

So you had to deal with all that insanity, the volatility all the time now.

All the time. Just every now and then. Oh, yeah. Right. And you knew it every night. You knew when it was going to happen. Right. You knew the tone. Yeah.

But when it happened it was it wasn't funny. It was like, you know, serious, you know, scary, scary. But when you get for a comedian it turns into, you know. Yeah. Best bits. Exactly.

And also like when you grow up in that shit, you know, there's two ways to go. Either you make it funny and you learn how to figure out how to survive and manage it or, you know, you get fucked up yourself and you chose the other. You chose the I'm going to make this funny and survive this shit. Yeah.

I don't. I don't I don't I never drink. I don't drink.

Well, I mean, I imagine if you grow up with someone like that, you know, why would you you're scared of it.

But you're either going to do you wind up drinking. Right?

I went the other way and you were like, nope, I want to stay in charge of me. Yeah.

And so when you were who were the first comics that you were looking at that made you that brought you some because I imagine it's the same with you. You watch your comics and it made you feel better about life.

For me, it was the first person I looked at going, OK, this is. I'm into this, and this is somebody doing comedy was was Richard Pryor that first album, not his first album. It was 1972, a good album called That Nigger's Crazy. Yes. Every two seventy three. Right. That album just changed everything for me. I used to sit and listen to it every day over and over and over and over.

At the first six months I was laughing and, you know, you just sitting, just listening to it over and over and over and over and over.

Right.

And what was the big bit on that record, which was the bit that made you like that you couldn't get out of your head?

The whole album. The whole album. The Why the why no. And Dracula. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, hey, hey.

You fool you people in No one that people in know the people and whatever you want to keep what you do with people in the people. What was your name for Dracula. Yeah. You motherfucker. Yeah.

What kind of name is that. Right. Right. What kind of name is that for you from Transylvania. Yeah. I don't know where it is in the world but you hear that. Oh yeah. You are a motherfucker. Why don't you get your pizza hanging all out your mouth once you get you off the it. That's a dentist.

You know how that laugh. So that was it man. That was, that was the thing that blew your mind.

Blew my mind. And and I had seen, you know, watch Sullivan and seeing, you know, come in and say, no, let's flip Wilson. Love Flip Wilson.

When I was a kid, everybody loved Flip Geraldine and don't show man he had his own show. Yeah. Yeah. One of the biggest shows. Yeah. It's great. And what everybody would be on that show. I loved him. I thought he was hysterical, but I never thought of, you know, when I would see him do standup. It wasn't like I was like Oh yes, right, right.

I saw Richard. Right. That's when it was like you. That's I'm, I'm that I'm, I want to I'm him. Right. This I have this thing.

It always amazes me, too, like when I watch Richard now, like the vulnerability of the guy, like the guy was so like when you learn about him, about his like, you know, there was always his broken heart was always right under the surface, you know, and you could always feel the humanity of the guy. It's kind of it's amazing. It doesn't matter what the bit was. It was just like he was all in my head.

The real deal. And when did you start? Like, what else did you start putting together to start thinking about how you were going to approach it other than Richard?

Well, when I first started doing it, it was it was mostly impressions. That's the easiest that's the easiest way to to get on stage. Right. Is doing do impressions, because if you sound like that's it, you have to have a personality, you have to have any jokes. Just sound like the person that you're doing. Yeah. So I was always a good mimic.

So that's how I when I first a guy I said I would do Richard, I would do Mahamad back then.

Is it this how long ago was I would do Jimmy Carter because he was the president and I would do Ali and Cosell, all that stuff that they would do on the wide world of sports. I would do all of that stuff.

Al green shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Outside and I was always really, really good at doing voices.

And that's how you started to do that.

That's how I started getting on stage. Open mic doing. Doing. Yeah actually was what. No open mikes back then. Back then I used to have a remember the Gong Show in the 70s. Yeah. Well the bars you have Gong Show night so you have five different Gong Show nights. I would go to The Gong Show nights when. Twenty five dollars.

But you getting some you got some chops. So when do you head into the city? I mean, how does that take place and what's your what's your parents thinking about it?

Oh, my parents don't really know how much, they don't know the extent of it. Like they know that I'm doing some stuff but they don't know that, you know, OK, bye bye. Eleventh grade. I'm like, you know, I'll get I'll go see. I'm staying over it. My friend Clint's house. Yeah. And I'll go to the comic strip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And then the next day Miss School, my twelfth grade, I was like she didn't know the extent of it but they never were tripping about it because they didn't know about it.

Then when I started making some, some paper, it was, it was all good and I started making money from it really early.

I got on SNL when I'm nineteen, but the year before that I'm kind of like a working comic. I'm like working regularly all the little whatever little they were doing.

One nighters with Joey Vega, maybe Fred Stoller. Yeah. Demeritt. Stoller, yes. Yes, absolutely. I did a comic strip in Fort Lauderdale with Fred Stone. Yeah, I would jet jet ski undergraduate's. Yeah.

He would have fell off the jet ski and because it was making him nauseous, who are the other guys that were there were.

Dennis Wolfberg there, who was there, Dennis Wolfberg, absolutely, absolutely, yes, Dennis will get used to crush every day Wolfberg Good. Steve Mittleman, Steve Mittleman, no Chin. He has no chance. Yeah, I have no chin. I just kill a bit. Yeah. The whole baby actually was in a big laugh off in the 1980s, eighty seven point eighty eight with Steve Mittleman.

He won. I came in fifth. Mittleman came in first. I think Carol Leifur came in second shift.

Mark Shifman, he came in third.

Won't work on Fridays. Yeah. Is that true.

Yeah, he became Orthodox. He doesn't work here. Mark Shift is Orthodox. There's a couple Orthodox guys back then.

So you came in fifth and you were like seventeen. Eighteen. So an eighteen. You're doing those one nighters in Jersey and shit and and by the time I'm eighteen is a little bit of a circuit.

When I started there was no when I'm fifteen, there's no just like, you know, Gong Show night and bars. Then by and by the time I'm eighteen you get a little like a lot of places are having comedy nights and there's a little bit of a circuit that you can go in this clubs you can go to at it. You can go to Philly and work the comedy works, or you could go to DC and work. Garvin's grew.

So you doing all that at eighteen? Yeah. Yeah. So you're meeting all the guys, you're meeting all the old weirdos and you know, you're, you're becoming a comic, so you're learning about all of it.

But you know what? It's not it's not it wasn't like it it was like it wasn't a lot of comics. Smaller communities. Yeah. It was a such a small community. And it was like a like now being a comic is like a mainstream. Oh yeah. Everybody in show business is thousands of comics. But back then it was just it was just a handful back then. It was like being a magician. Right, or something. It was you and Stella and Mittleman and I was it was a few more.

And then Gilbert Gottfried. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The genius of that period, he was the one with all the comics to go watch him every time he was up.

Did you like him? Absolutely. Still makes me laugh. He was like and that's also it was specifically New York. There was definitely a New York thing and then people eventually came out to L.A. But I imagine, like I guess most of the guys who started, like Belzer was already gone and those guys were already Campbell's L.F..

So it's a year or two, just a year or two before I got out there.

So when you were doing the work, you know, people were saying like, oh, that guy used to be at the club here and now he's in L.A. Everyone got to go to L.A., right. Richard Lewis. All those people.

Yeah, those guys those guys were older than me, so I was gone. I know that that those group of guys and those guys were established comics back, like those guys were serious. Real. Yeah. We didn't even think of ourselves like you remember Lucian Luciane.

Oh, yeah. He I remember when I auditioned at the comic strip, he says, oh, I already have enough angry white guys. Yeah.

He told me your material's horrible, which we've got very strong stage presence. Thank you. Material's horrible.

So how did it unfold like so you're doing comedy, you know, you're paying your dues and you've got what are you got an hour. Nineteen eighty. When you're seventeen. Eighteen you got an hour.

Not back then people weren't doing what. The hour. Richard made that popular right before then. It wasn't half an hour. Yeah. Tight ten. And you had your shit that you had to work in front of you if you got on The Tonight Show. Right. If you got the Merv Griffin or something like that. But you know, nobody was doing an hour a big gig back then was opening for people. So you needed ten, fifteen minutes.

The killer shit. So everybody's doing an hour like Richard Pryor. Is Richard Pryor in concert. Right. That kind of changed the whole comedy landscape. That became the the the standard way, the comic you know, the headline comic is bringing an hour of shit. Richard started that.

I remember seeing that when I was in high school. It changed my entire life.

Jesus Christ, Richard is Richard is Richard. Is that what Marlon Brando was to acting, Richard, is to to stand up comedy?

How did you end up being managed by Ritchie and then getting SNL? Was that all through the comic strip?

Well, I was started work. The comic strip was the easiest club to get in because it's still real cliquish with comics. Yeah. And back then, all the comics kind of book the clubs. So it was really, really cliquish, right? It was impossible. Impossible to get on a catch. Yeah.

Tell me what was the improv was kind of snooty and and so the comic strip was the easiest place to work out.

That's funny because it's sort of still like that. The comic strip was always kind of the working class was in the celebrity hall. It wasn't like an old timey New York call, but it was for like new young guys. It was always been like that.

The comic strip is still like the. Haven't been I haven't been there. It was just a place where a lot of guys from the island, a lot of working class comics could could work, you know.

Well, that's that's how we got in there. I went literally went down and got online and got the ticket and did the whole thing and auditioned. And Lucian told me, you know, my act is terrible, but you have presence.

I was hanging out at the comic strip getting those two o'clock spots, two o'clock this year, those two to a.m..

Yeah. And those are those kind of spots.

And I never it never bothered me to go up really, really late when it was silly. Yeah. Nine people. Yeah. Yeah. And you're playing for who you're playing for whoever you're hanging out with the back. Yeah.

I was like I was doing those spots enough that when Saturday Night Live had there they did like when the original cast left with like a cattle call and you know, they were looking for everywhere. Right. One day I went to the comic strip and he was like, yeah, Saturday Night Live is looking for a black guy. He should go down audition. OK, we need a black guy. Let's. What's your manager then?

No, no. Back then he just owned the club. You just own the comic strip. Yeah. And him. And him.

And Bob WX. Yeah. Bob WACs. Yeah. I went down and got got this show and maybe a year in, maybe a year into it they started manageably and they.

Did you do that just because like. All right, well you know, these guys know me. I work at their club.

No, I was 19. I thought, you know, Richie was, you know, one of the major player back and he owned the comedy club. And Bob Wax was a lawyer. I was like, I need a lawyer. Yeah, I'm a lawyer, my manager together.

And so with that, with SNL, everything turned around really quickly. Right.

Like you became big quick hindsight being 20, 20 year. But back then it didn't feel quick because I was 19. So it just it just felt like, you know, it didn't feel quick, but it just felt like this is how it happens. Yeah. This is how it happens. Right. Right, right.

You had nothing to compare it to. So you're like, I do comedy. I'm funny. I'm let's go away.

And then I got that again. This is exactly what it was like. Totally took it for granted.

So when do you decide like like because I, I immersed myself in some stuff because I was watching some stuff, some appearances that you made on different shows.

And it was sort of it's very interesting to see like what was the pressure that you felt almost immediately, you know, from, you know, once I guess it was 48 hours, which was the one that kind of blew it all open.

That's the first one, 48 hours. Yeah.

So on SNL, you become this huge hit with all these characters and people love you and then you do the movie. And I have to assume that pretty quickly. You realize you miss doing comedy for strangers?

No, what happened was that was the way it was. That was the way that it was what that show was like. I think Chevy Chase was on their first. Yeah. It was like you do this show and then you can get to do movies. You know, you build up a fan base and get people in that he can go off and make movies. And that's that was that's what I thought the blueprint was.

So. So you knew that.

So you thought, wow, I didn't know that I was looking like, OK, now it's time to I got off of this these movies. The movie was a big hit. Yeah. I had the other one trading places was coming and it was I've been on the show three years and was like OK and I could go make movies now. So I was moving on because I was like, that's what, that's what you do, right.

And you're in your mind and I think rightfully so. You're like, this is how show business works.

This is exactly this is how it works when you're on Saturday Night Live. That's what I was thinking.

And you were like the biggest star, like in the world. And I just like I can't like it's so weird to me.

Here's what I got it I got to bring up, because it sort of bothered me that, like, early on when you became huge and you were doing like Carson and there was you know, there was something about your confidence and your knowledge of who you were and what you were capable of, that kind of rose up.

You transcended that format. But it was just sort of interesting that these guys, you kept bringing it up over and over again on these talk shows, like why are you asking me these certain questions? You know, why are you asking me? How do I get big so quickly? Why are you asking me about what I'm doing with my life on my watch? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That it was there specifically this list of black questions that these guys and what I found when watching it is that there was sort of a weird kind of innate bias.

It just happened in the questions.

And it was it wasn't weird. It was the it was the 80s. It was a whole different world back then. Yeah, it was the old it was the old world back then still. Like the 70s, in the 60s, it wasn't that far removed from that. Right, right. So it's like the sensibilities and, you know, perceptions and what you can say in which there was no politically incorrect. You could say whatever you could do jokes you could do Polish jokes and you could say, OK, you could do everything back.

But did you feel like they were trying to box that box, not boxed in?

It was you know, that I was saying that was calling for what it was when they would do something. Right. Never felt boxed in. Right. But I was like I wasn't surprised by it because those were the times. Yeah. And I was an anomaly. It was like. The reason the reason I blew up in films was because I'm the first I'm the first African-American to like the character in the movie to to go into the white world and take charge in the world.

Yeah, that would, because usually the black character up until then, the black character is the sidekick. Yeah, the black sidekick. But my character shows up in the first movie I've written, like it's written like the sidekick. But if you watch the movie, he's not the sidekick. The whole move, Nick Nolte is going. Now what do we do, convict? What's our next move? Where do we go now? What happens when we go this way?

We go that way. And they found that funny like that was it's some shit that we just stumbled onto. It wasn't intentional. Yeah. It was like that back then. They to say he stole the scene. He stole the scene. Literally, this is not written for him to be like that. He stole the scene. So but but they thought that was really, really funny.

They thought that's what made me think you Big Easy like that. Well they know.

They know it wasn't written like that. It's like you got Nick Nolte is a six foot three, you know, blond hair, blue eyed leading man. And and they're watching me in the scene. So he must have stolen it.

But it wasn't written like this.

Do you think that was do you think that perception was racist?

Not at all. They hadn't seen it up until then. And yeah, so was this new thing.

So you Kavis you kavis this zone for yourself, you didn't carve it.

I just that's the way it worked out. I wasn't carving it is like. It's not like you, the path that you went up on, you carved the path, it's more it's much more like that fuckin that feather in Forrest Gump you have floating around, you know, and you go, that's it.

So this is where I blew in this direction. Right. And it turned out like.

When did you first when did you start having, like, a friendship with Richard? When did you meet Richard?

We never had a friendship, Richard. Like like my dad's age. Yeah. And and Richard, I didn't do I didn't drink and smoke. I didn't do any drugs. I didn't do any of that stuff. So we were not in the same right zone.

Social, you know, orbit. Yeah. But when I met him he was just as an artist. Yeah. He was super, super nice to me. I met him coming from Atlanta and he was on the plane and he was on the seat in front of me. And the stewardess told me what I was getting on the plane. She was Mr. Pryors on the plane. I was like Mr. Pryor. I was at my first comedy record on a cassette.

I went up to us and Mr. Pryor. Eddie Murphy. Can you say you say, oh, yeah, I know you are is my record. Could you listen to his all?

And he was sitting up, he had headphones on and I was in the back watching his head and he would go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And I'm in the back like, oh oh that's good.

I go up to him and he said, he said, you are very funny. And he said, you remind me of me, you make me think of me. And I did it.

Then when the plane lands he goes, Where are you staying? And I was like, I'm saying about Mandeville Canyon. And he was like, I to give you a lift home. He took his car. The guy drove his car, met him at the airport. He had a white rolls. Yeah. And he drove me, drove me up to the place I was staying. And that's like, imagine that's the first time you meet your idol.

You meet him like that. Yeah, I meet him like that. He listens. He's laughing at you. Shit. I think he drives you home and he's nice to you. Was like, wow, that's the first.

That's how I met Richie to get that sort of validation like you remind me of me. And then he kind of look back at, you know, you know, you're, you know, you're kind of the next in line.

Right?

It turns out I wasn't thinking of it like, oh, no, I know I have it now. And I wasn't I was just thinking, like, I made Richard I made Richard laugh.

Yes. And oh, shit. And he actually drove me home. I was like, fucked up. Like, I was, like, floating from it. And then he was just like back then Richard was he did the biggest, single biggest comedy star in movies and all this. And like I said, he was older than me, so we didn't really riot or anything.

But did you have sort of multiple I before Harlem nights? Did you have, like a lot of time? Did you spend with him? When were you able to spend time with him at all?

Richard used to when Richard would go at the play down at the Comedy Store, all the comics would come down, you know, and sit in the back and watch. Did you used to do the Comedy Store? When I was in L.A.?

Absolutely. Of Richard Pryor was at the Comedy Store. Everybody goes, you know, and just just in the back. And I had a bunch of nights like that. Then afterwards he'd be in the big in the main room like, you know, holding court. And all the cameras are sitting around late. So I did a bunch of that.

I was a doorman there for a couple of years, back in eighty six. And yeah, there was that, you know, I used to see Mooney all the time and and Pryor with Pryor started coming in after he burned himself up, you know, trying to put it back together, you know, and I got to see him.

I met him. I met him after he had went through all that shit. Oh really? Yeah. I didn't meet the I met him after he was burnt up and was getting it together. And I never met that.

Richard Wright. No. When I saw him it was rough because like he would you know, it was what was amazing about him and I'm sure, you know, it is like you would see him struggle. I mean, you could he would go up there sometimes and just like have a hard time for, like a half an hour.

And then he just chip away and build that shit out like, you know, he would just take the hit and take the hit until it started to make sense. It was kind of amazing.

I think that it was like that after he burnt up and was trying to, like, still do it and do it sober. Right. I think it was harder to put it together when he was sober. It was harder to do. And when he wasn't sober, that's when it's like, you know. Yeah, right. When it's like, what the fuck?

Yeah. Where's he where's it coming from? The fact. But that that's when it was effortless, when before he was, you know, before he was sober. It was effortless. Yeah. And that's when people you would see Richard neighbored so you'd see him do hour and then you see him a week later and he'd do a whole nother house shit you never hear. Back then he was like that guy.

So when you did Delirious and you had you you. Worked out that hour and a half on the road. You did it, Richard, style. Well, I admit I have been doing stand. I mean, what's funny was when I got on SNL, people like I said, there's no kind of no real comedy circuit back then. No, you you're on TV and all that. So people that know I did standup. So when I popped up in Delirious, that was a note that was like out of nowhere.

Yeah. Whoa.

What the fuck is really. Absolutely. It was like we had a stand up. No one had a clue. Oh, my God.

It's like a secret weapon. Yeah, it was. I don't know. I showed up in a red leather suit doing all this shit. What the fuck he man. And then. And so. So now you've got now that profile just raises. So now you're this movie guy, your SNL guy, now you're the stand up guy. And it seemed like there was a point like, what was your what was the thing with Dick Cavett?

Do you guys really friends?

It seems like you really had some weird relationship with Dick Cavett to hang out with the good stuff with Dick Cavett. He used to be he would pop up. I'll even know when that was the first time. Yeah, but he would just he would just pop up like you would like be, you know. You know, backstage SNL and Dick Cavett would just pop up and say, how are they doing? And you start talking. And he would do he was always he's a God.

If you dare him to do anything, he would do it. Yeah. So we I got into a got into this things. So I was daring him to do like we went to go see Diana Ross at the guard. Yeah. And Dick Cavett, that's a day to go up on the stage and grab Diana Ross. Yeah. He just says, why are you doing this to me? And then he gets up and walks, goes and you sit in and then you see Dick Cavett come in from the side on the stage.

And did Diana Ross said, oh, Dick Cavett came in and he started hugging her and dance. And then he put his hand her ass and he came back. So he was that guy. And so that became our relation. I dare you to do this that day, to do it. But once we're SNL and it due to Eddie Grant from a remake, that's all we're going to rock down to Electric Avenue. Yeah, the laughs. OK, so they come to Saturday Night Live and the whole dressing room was all people with dreadlocks is back in the early days before, you know, dreadlocks was popular.

Everybody's kind of like Dick Cavett was like, well, look at their hair. I was like, yeah. He says, this is how do they get their hair like that? I said, I don't know. He said something to me that they use good shit in their hair to get it in. And I said, hell no, I dare you to go into the dressing room and asked him, does he put goats in his hair? And he goes, Why are you doing this?

Walks down the hallway and he goes, and I'm standing in the doorway. He goes into the makeup room. And all these Jamaicans are standing around and he walks up and he grabbed these girls. He stand next to me, Eddie Grant, and he goes a little conversation. He goes, you hear, it's so interesting is how do you get your hair like that? And he goes, the guys guy's tells. And we just do this. Whatever he says, how we do.

Is this really because someone told me that you use good shit to get your hair like that and the room goes quiet and looked at him and said, no, that's not true. Then Cavett looks at me and says, Why did you tell me that? And walked away, let me stay. If I could do so, he said he would pop up and come to my house and stay for the weekend.

Really just pop up. Yeah, he would he would just pop up and be like, hey, then you're hanging out with Dick Cavett.

It's so funny that you had this weird relationship with Dick Cavett. Yeah, he would have been around Dick Cavett quite a bit. And to consider to been to the sumo match with a sumo match with Dick Cavett.

Do you talk to him still? He is yare. I wonder if you haven't seen Dick Cavett in about ten or fifteen years.

Who do you hang who do you keep in touch with from the old days?

Anybody you know, old? I found the older that I get, the small of my suggestions, you know, and the friends that I do have, the few friends that I still do have, they like friends from, you know, 30, 40 years.

It's pretty still around now, innit?

Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.

I was watching all TV shows to do. I went to high school with the high school, but some of the kids you hang out with, the old timers, like I notice in the new movie you got, you pull back. Everybody got everybody back in their Sweetwater to do one of the barbers in the shed done the God.

That's not Arsenio. The other guy's. Yeah, he's a he's my best friend from high school, really.

But we don't we're not still like that. But when we were in high school, we were like best buddies. You a bunch of stuff on Saturday Night Live sketches. And he's in he's in the very first a movie in 48 hours when Nick Nolte to come to get me out of the cell. That's Sweetwater in there and trading places when I'm in a sale. I'm saying I'm a karate man. Do this. Sweetwaters want to go? Yeah, it's a phone.

A limo with busted. What do you.

Ignát Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the guy. He's coming to America.

He's the other. And he was in this one, too, and also Louie Anderson, I notice, is back. Yeah, Louie Anderson in a dashiki. Yeah, the movie is the movie is worth seeing just to see Louie Anderson in the Anderson.

Well, you know, honestly, it's I was thinking about the first one, you know, and trying to put it together because it seemed to me that, like, over a period of time, even though, you know, everything was going good for you and you were amassing a lot of weather clothes, but like it seemed to me like the original, the first.

Coming to America, I could have been I always got the feeling as I watched the appearances over time that you were you started to to be resentful of of of being trapped by not your own success, but just that you just seemed to be sort of angry about maybe the visibility or the expectation or what do you what do you look at when you look back? What do you think you were pissed off about? Oh, no.

I don't know that I was ever pissed off. I never been. You don't feel like you're pissed off.

How old was I when I'm in my 20s? Yeah.

Yeah, it just it just felt like, you know, like I'm like by the time raw is, it comes out like you, I imagine it would have to be hard to know what you were really if people were just reacting to your celebrity or to what you were doing, you know what I mean? I imagine.

Absolutely, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I stopped doing standup, because it become like it was like you couldn't really tell how. Funny, it was like funny or is this like, you know, some Pavlovian shit, yeah, right. I just think it lasted. So it was like I remember one night I was on the Comedy Store, the comic strip, and I get on stage and the audience is like, just before you do anything, you so I let them know that.

And I was like, it's so hard to do nothing just in here.

You fuckers just laugh. And I just stood there for like ten minutes and I killed just didn't say anything.

I just stand and you were be quiet and then I look around and laugh. I come again for ten minutes. I was able to just, you know, look around and just make a stupid face. Ago I was getting laughs doing that. And it was, you know what, just kind of take a little break. Yeah.

So let's take a little break from it. Right.

You know what? I tell you what, now that's everybody. Has that now been doing comedy? Yeah. This is so mainstream that the audience knows, you know, it's like you're the comic. Think I'm excited to see some guy doing shit and they're not funny. But the audience knows this is why I laugh. It's never silent. I don't care how bad the comic is, it's never silent. They get something, they say something, laugh.

So everybody has a problem. That's why you got a you know, you got that no go by what you think is funny, what your gut is and if it makes you laugh and that's it.

But if you try to, you know, figure these fuckers out because they're just laughing at whatever you write, and then it's fundamentally like the one thing that used to be satisfying because, you know, you know, you did something. You can't trust it. Right. So that's got to be fucking frustrating, you know what I mean? Like, you know, if I can just sweep through this and you guys are going to laugh, I mean, what the fuck am I doing up here?

Exactly. So I stopped doing it, but I didn't get frustrated by it. I was like a, you know, yelling, this is not what it was. I was going to do anything. I'm going to talk to animals now. I'm back to do it.

But then you did. But you tried to push it.

But it felt like there was a couple moments in Raw and a couple of moments on on on TV shows where you were like trying to push them a little bit, you know, trying to defy them to to laugh at you like, you know, whatever you like. You know, like I'm going to act this way to see how much you guys will take on.

If I came across like that, I was just being a real asshole at the. Yeah, I remember the my shit jumped off really, really big. And I had written I'm a really young guy. Yeah, you're right. There's all of its allies, a lot of stuff to them you have to navigate. Sure. Literally have to go through this minefield. Right. Right.

To get to get to this moment, to get to the moment you're right now, just to get through, you know, that whole being in you're in your 20s and being famous. You know, that's sort of it's amazing, that vicarious journey. Yeah, but you've held it. You've held the vessel together. Yeah. Well, that's why I was going to say, though, it seemed like at that time where you, like, stand up, you've had enough of it seem like coming to America.

The first one was almost like a like a personal fantasy film. The idea that you maybe, you know, I could go someplace where no one knew me and just be a regular person. Yeah.

That's the premise of the movie on the tour bus. I got that idea. And it's a very fairy tale. Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice? But it was it was it was past it was a passing thought this new one who wrote who wrote it.

Who is wrote it with you.

When I got the idea I went back and got the original writers. Barry blasting David Sheffield wrote the original. Yeah. And we talked it in guts like a structure. They're really good at getting your story structure. And so we got that together. Then I got brought in Kenya Barris from Blackish. I talked to that guy. He's a smart guy. He's funny. Ha. Yeah. We got him, brought him in and he made it to coming to America ish.

Yeah. Because we've got the older writers with the structure and he was like a new hot shot and that was in the middle, you know, we took four years, we got a good script. The story's great.

I mean, you know, it's almost like all ages kind of movie thing, you know what I mean? It's almost it's like it could almost be like like a classic fantasy movie.

Yeah. But it took four years to get this script like that. And it was different. It was a bunch of different stuff.

What we had is how did it evolve?

What was the problems wasn't problems. It was you know, originally when I was writing, when I got the idea Tracy Morgan was going to be my son. So we were writing for Tracy Morgan in an original script. I didn't it wasn't that I had a son. It was what what happened was I was going I think we wanted I wanted to take other wives. Yeah. It was like we picked up with a story and I want to take other wives.

And it was like, oh, no, I make them hate him. And so he wrote a version with that version like that. And we didn't like that. And we wrote like every you know, every time we finish a draft, we'd be like, this isn't right. But this little chunk right here, it works. And we kept doing that to where, you know, we had a bunch of chunks that worked.

Right. And what really made or really made it with me was a I saw this is when the narrative came together. When we saw I saw I think it was one of those Schwarzenegger movies, the Terminator movie, where he they made him look young and he showed up and it looked like like like the old Schwarzenegger about what the fuck it looks so real. Yeah. That was like, yo, that's what I saw.

You could take that, make you look young shit. And we could go and make another scene where, you know, that scene we were out in the club looking for chicks. Right. We could say later on that night when you said young special and that's when the whole story clicked together and we got that little piece of technology open the door, opened the door to the story.

It's so funny that even got you got those twins back for a couple for thirty seconds and we got them.

And that's the original sexual chocolate. Those are the original sexual chocolate members of the bad band. That's already what the original members, that guy that you know that guy.

Yeah, he's the he knows we left.

And most of all the characters have a lot of that and movies. A lot of them. I have a lot of movies where I'm singing stooped, singing stupid donkey. And Shrek is always singing. Yeah, I got a lot of scenes in movies where I'm singing bad. I've kind of worn that joke out, but it's still always makes me laugh when someone's doing that. And Randy Watson is the king of already.

Watson is like as a character. It's almost like somebody, you know from show business. I mean, there there's plenty of Randy Watson's out there, man.

Yeah, right. Especially locally. You know, every local town has what they want to say, you know, what do they introduce me to first? You know him as Joe the policeman from the What's Going Down episode. That's my mama. You know, it's a bunch of guys that had little roles like that. And now they're in the local town. The local celebrity. Yeah.

It's like comedy is full of those fucking people, man. Yeah, I really like the movie. And I thought, like I thought Leslie and Tracy were were amazing.

Amazing. I mean, Leslie Jones, she is like, amazing, so raw and natural.

And when she can just do her thing, it's like, holy shit, so funny, man. And Tracy said, you know, it's nice you can't you kind of guy he he controlled himself for that movie is very happy. He focused.

Well, he got it. He has a like I said, we worked on that script for four years. So he's got a script. Everybody that's on it has a you know, he got a well you know, worked out character. Yeah. Good words. And he got in Craig Brewer, the brilliant director you so you got to it was easy to focus and to to do it. And your daughter's in it. Yeah, my baby girl is in it.

How was that the first time you work with her as an actor?

For some. Any of my kids have been in any of my stuff and I. Yeah, that was the first in a. I can't put into words what says if you have kids, you know, you go see your kid, it's something in school, right? And if you could paint something and you put it in a refrigerator and eyes get wet from that. So imagine going going to work and your baby girl is at your job with you and she's contributing to what's going on here.

And she's doing a good job, too. She's got fight scenes, Dorenbos karate fight scenes every day. I just filled up every day.

Every day. Yeah.

Can I ask you about like we talk about Randy Watson and we talk about these movies, what was it that, like, made you want to tell Rudy Ray Moore story?

I thought from the big first of all, I used to watch his movies all the time. You did because. Oh, yeah. Because I watch movies. I watch a lot of stuff. Yeah. And I don't watch just just the classic stuff. I watch the classic stuff and I and I love the stuff that's so bad. It's good. Yeah. Those movies like the movies that are like so bad there that I love movies like that. And Rudy Ray Moore was that Yankee as a kid, as a kid, even before I thought like that, like I love that so bad.

It's good. I was a fan of Rudy Ray Moore's movies because of that when I was a kid. Yeah. And when his movies were coming out, we would all go and we would laugh at seeing the microphone come into the shot. And, you know, the certain way you hit certain lines. We thought it was a snap. We knew it was bad. Back to this kids. We knew it was. So it was hard. Right.

But it was it was funny. And we would argue even as a kid, I would argue that that he's trying to be funny.

Yeah. And they would say, well, say no, no, he's not serious. Now say no, that he's not serious. He's that he's trying to be funny. And that's why we're laughing. And they will be like, nah, he's he's serious. They were laughing, thinking that he was serious. It was so bad. I was like, no, we're supposed to be led. There's no way that we're not supposed to be laughing.

Yeah. Even as a kid. Yeah. So I was always a fan of his. And then I thought he had this great stranger than fiction story. So we try to get it done. It was back in the 90s when I first tried to get it done. I went to Rudy was but no studio was making no Rudy Ray Moore movie back then. It was like not happening right then, you know, into Netflix ten years, fifteen years later.

And then it was a place where you make the room.

So it was really about a guy who was committed to his vision and made it happen. Absolutely.

Rudy Ray Moore is another reason why he's a kind of fascination for me is is his career is like the exact polar opposite of my career, like the way he came on and what he had to do and how hard it was for him to get in. And, you know, it's like we did the same the same thing. We're both doing comedy. We both do music stuff. We both, you know, went to the movies.

But he had such a hard time getting in there. And I was the sensation and he was, you know, struggling. And so it was fascinating in that respect. And then I had once I got into the movie business, I had a newfound appreciation and respect for the when I found out that he put his movies together and, you know, they would finance out of his own pocket and that, you know, it was he was like this guerrilla filmmaker.

He wasn't just a nut. This guy really was, you know, trying to get it done. So it was like, this guy's a great movie. It was like just like just like Ed Wood is a great movie about this in an Edwardian kind of way. Yeah. I thought his story story would be great. So I literally went and got the writers that wrote Ed Wood to write. Really Dolemite. Yeah. That those guys wrote it.

Yeah.

I thought it was great man. And you didn't. But you didn't really you didn't know Rudy.

No different world, different different universe. I met him a couple of times. I didn't know where you meet him.

The very first time I met him was on downtown L.A. We was doing 48 hours. Yeah.

I asked him, I said, get your hands off me. And he said, I'm the guy, Rudy Raymore, that is really Raymore. And it was really he must have been smoking or something was like really skinny and looked like a homeless person. I took some pictures with him and it was like, wow, then I would see him. He would do little little gigs in L.A. like it did lingerie. Every now he would play there on Sunset.

And the last place I seen him was Steve's on the Strip in Ventura Boulevard, like in the nineties. Yeah. So whenever he was another one, like we would go see Richard because it was Richard, whatever he was in town, all the comics would go and sit around and Rudy Ray Moore was the same with the black comics. We would go meet Keenan or Sidney or Robin Townsend when Rudy Ray Moore came to town, we would go to wherever he was and sit in the back, be fucking scream.

It was funny. It was really Raymore.

He would do he would go up to a woman and say, The girl, close your legs. Why? Why eat off your drawls and they go eat off your drawerful.

We were like, what about did you ever see Red Fox? Not live here or something. Yeah, but but yeah, he was something on the set of Harlem Nights on the set of Harlem Nights, you got Red Fox, Richard Pryor, me, Robin Harris, Robin. Yeah, my brother Charlie. My Uncle Ray. And it was just rock. Arsenio is raucous laughter like this. The funniest shit happened off camera. Oh, always, always.

Laughing Red Fox is at the center of a red fox is the funniest. Just naturally funny. Sit in the room. Just naturally funny. Not trying to be funny. Yes. Funny. Everything that comes out of his mouth. Yeah. Funny. Yeah. Just wreaks it. That's Red Fox. It's just funny extemporaneously. Yeah. Just, just not, not even try to be not even in a he could not even be, he could be mad and everything he does is he says, he says it turns into comedy.

The whole room is screaming.

He was that guy. I love that.

Like you know that you know, you're so rude. And instead of like you know because because I love that.

I know that you met Rodney early on.

Oh, yeah. And he gave you that. I heard about that to me is the greatest story because every old comic, if you're dirty, some old comics can come up to you and go, hey, what are you doing, kid?

You got to clean it up. Yeah.

You know, and Rhonda was weird for him to be like that with me because he wasn't like that with like he people that Kinnison those guys, he champion them when he saw me, he was like a kid.

You know, when you show up and then you ready to do a later gig.

It was before Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I ran I ran into him after after like three years after that. Yeah. At the bathroom at Caesar's. Well, the first night it happened, I told him, he told me, you know, like, you know, I went to the comic strip in Fort Lauderdale to do this weekend. And Dangerfield pops up. Yeah. And he was like, Dangerfield's bumping everybody. Yeah. You know, so Dangerfield goes up and I'm like, this Dangerfield.

We watch my set because I want to go up because I knew I was going to kill. Yeah. So I go off after Dangerfield being crushed. Dangerfield's like a curse. Okay. But there is a lot of stuff, you know, you do a lot of foul language, you know, go with that stuff. So it was my word. I was like, wow, thanks.

Yeah. And then I, you know, forgot about it. Then a year later, I got Saturday Night Live two years ago. By then I'm at Caesar's Palace in Vegas in a urinal. And Dangerfield comes in and he's right next to me and I look over his Dangerfield.

He looks at me and says, Hey, look, I was like perfectly timed, like a perfectly timed joke that he even remembered that he even remembered. Right. He told because I'm just one of a thousand comics. You know, they said that he even remembered. Right. He didn't think much of my show back then, but he remained outside of the work and that even imagined that he would come in and and hit that like it was written.

Right. Right. It was like tagged it three years later.

Oh, perfect. Perfect. So what's going to happen, man?

What's going to happen with you know, there was some I read some that you told about that I thought was kind of beautiful, that you you know, in terms of your the sort of the the the arc of the comedy history that you say.

You said that Groucho informed Cosby. Cosby informed Richard. Richard informed you, you know, that there is this throughline.

Did I say in inform? Oh, no, no, no. I'm saying that inspired the engine. The engine of Cosby was Groucho. The engine of Pryor was Cosby. And the engine of Eddie is Prie. Right?

It's more than more than the engine is like the engine and those other people. It might have been like that. But then when is Richard? Richard changes. It's not like you just become your engine because she was influenced by Richard, restructures them, the whole thing. Right. And it's not just not just me. He changes everything. He takes it from, you know, from black and white to in color the whole art form. He changes.

He's this. He takes the ceiling and puts it up here. You know, comics used to just stand there and tell this shit into the make you know what, the little suede patches on the elbow. And Richard is the one that made it three dimensional. Use the whole stage. And so he opens it up how you can perform and he opens up subject matter. He opens it up, he just opens it up or he makes the canvas like this big giant thing.

And we were working on a stool, right?

Yeah. Everybody just is like, no, you could do to change. So it wasn't he wasn't just my engine. He'd like change. Like I said, he's the he's brand what Brando was as an actor. Brando. He showed up and changed everything. That's what Richard was. So are you like, are you going to go back? Are we going. Are you going to do the hour again, you think, after the plague?

The plan was because I had stopped making movies in 2011, I was like, let me take a break from movie stars making shitty movies.

And it was like this. Yeah. They give me give me Razzies. I think my father gave me the worst actor ever, Razzie. It was like you said, maybe it's time to take a break and get the worst actor ever need to pull back. He just had to pull back. So let me take a break in.

And then I was only going to take a break for a year. And all of a sudden, you know, six years go by and I'm like sitting on the couch and I'm like, you know, I kind of could sit on this couch and not get off it, but I don't want to leave it, you know, then the last bunch of shit they seem to do is bullshit. So I was like, let me get off the couch and do some stuff and remind them that I'm funny.

Right. Then if I want to come back to the couch again, I can do that. But so the plan was to go do Dolemite, Saturday Night Live, do coming to America and then do stand up and then see how I felt afterwards with, you know, I was like that.

Then at least they'll know that, you know, I'm funny. Yeah. Again, because otherwise if you sit on the couch that they don't they don't know you sitting on the couch and just thinking, yeah, you fell out and front of them all them. See the last movie, the last movie Plutonian she had anything happened to me sitting on the couch wondering what happened. Yeah. I didn't want to leave it there. It's like let me go.

So it might happen. That might happen. And we were literally we had dates, we had you know we literally we had a tour lined up, we had dates and all that shit and then the pandemic hit.

So now it's like when the world gets back to normal and people can be around each other, put that stuff together. I still I still want the same plan. I did everything else. All the other stuff came together. And, you know, and now is I still wanted to go and do that because I stopped doing standup when I'm 28. So. Wow, 15 at 59, I would be 60 in April. So I'm like this. I want to bookend it.

I was like, yeah, I'm I'm I'm curious to see what are the big what what will it be like? You know, I was a baby when I did it before. I was like when I get some structure to my little thoughts and go and get on stage and do it again, I want to see what it's going to be like. Wow, man. And be it'd be cool, but it's kind of like bookends. Yeah. And if I want to go sit on the couch.

Cool. Yeah. Pick my shirt off and I want to sit on a couch. That's a metaphor for, you know. Yeah. Just not chasing it. And if something comes along, this is amazing, you know, to get some opportunity to work with some amazing artists or something. Some amazing director, of course, you know, I get off the couch and do that with the whole being out there doing, you know, three movies a year and doing all that shit.

That shit is over. Yeah, I don't need it anymore, Georgine.

I'm like I said, I'll be sixty in a couple of weeks. You got all these babies.

There you have it. You love the fatherhood thing. Oh, yeah.

And it's at the center of everything. That's beautiful.

It's nice that you found that and you found it over and over again and time over and over and over and over again.

And then and then along the way, I realized that if you if you put your children first. Yeah. You never make a bad decision. That's nice. Everything when you get to where I got is OK, when you get to some crossroads moment and you got some severe OK, what's best for my children? If you go that route, you never make the wrong decision and you get along with all of them.

A You know, Mark, I am so blessed with my kids. I don't have one bad seed. I don't have one, you know, or you're the one I don't have any. And my kids are so great. That's great. Normal people and nobody's Hollywood kid. None of my kids are so and smart and in trying to do stuff. Yeah. I'm so blessed with my kids. Well great man. He really got lucky.

Well it's great man. It's great talking to you and congratulations on the movie. It was really an honor to speak to you. I've always had a lot of respect for you. And it was it was fun, man.

Oh, thank you. Nice talking to you, too. Take care of you, too, man.

Stay safe. There you go. Eddie Murphy, what a blast, what a fun thing to just be engaged in. Talk with Eddie Murphy for an hour. The movie is coming to number two America. That's a sequel of Coming to America. It's now streaming on Amazon Prime video. And don't forget, if you're struggling right now, check out Better Help. It's a secure, affordable online service providing professional counselors who can listen and help you just fill out a questionnaire to help assess your specific needs.

And better help will match you with your own licensed professional therapist. WTF with Marc Maron is sponsored by Better Help, and our listeners get 10 percent off their first month of online therapy when they visit. Better help Dotcom to visit better dotcom slash WTF enjoying the over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced, better health professional. I will let you know. I will let you know what happened at the Critics Choice Awards.

You're going to know before me if you're listening to this. All right. Here's some dirty rhythmic blues work. Blues work.

Are Lives and monkey in Lavander. God, angels coming in for landing.