Nobody can deny that Eddie Murphy has always radiated star power and charisma, but his stock dropped significantly throughout the 1990s and early 2000s after he lent his talents to a series of comedies that either underperformed at the box office, found themselves getting panned by critics and audiences, or both on more than a few occasions.
It was a steady decline for an actor who shot to fame as one of the most incendiary comedians of the last four decades, with the young stand-up almost instantly parlaying his talents into big screen success, where he headlined beloved classics like 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America and more.
However, fast forward 20 years and Murphy was a fixture of the Golden Raspberry circuit, to the extent that his association with the awards dished out for the very worst Hollywood has to offer is comparable only to Adam Sandler and Sylvester Stallone, two of the Razzie’s favorite longtime targets. In fact, he won Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Actress all for the same movie, and it’s a widely-held belief that Norbit was so awful that it killed his chances of landing an Academy Award for Dreamgirls.
The 59 year-old only appeared in two feature films between 2012’s A Thousand Words and Prime Video’s recently released sequel Coming 2 America, and in a new interview, he was incredibly open about why he spent so long on hiatus.
“I was making sh*tty movies. I was like, ‘This sh*t ain’t fun. They’re giving me Razzies. Motherf*ckers gave me the ‘worst actor ever’ Razzie. Maybe it’s time to take a break. I was only gonna take a break for a year, then all of a sudden six years go by, and I’m sitting on the couch, and I could sit on the couch and not get off it, but I don’t want to the last bunch of sh*t they see me do to be bullsh*t. The plan was to go do Dolemite, Saturday Night Live, Coming 2 America, and then do stand-up and see how I felt afterwards. At least then they’ll know I’m still funny.”
You can’t argue with his assessment, and while Coming 2 America is hardly setting the world alight, it’s far from a disaster. Eddie Murphy‘s next move now will be trying to make sure that his comeback is far from fleeting, and that he avoids falling back into familiar habits.