Entertainment Weekly - 11.2019

whole idea of ‘You don’t have

to be brilliant to get your s--- off,

you just have to believe in it’ was

a universal and timeless story.”

Like Moore, Murphy believes.

Already the subject of Oscar buzz

for his performance, he’ll return

to Saturday Night Live, which

gave him his big break in 1980,

in December. And he’s got sequels

to Coming to America and Beverly

Hills Cop in the works. “I’m still

me,” he says. “I know I’m still

funny. When I first got up on the

mic for Dolemite, there were

a couple scenes with an audience

and I was improvising and they

were laughing and I had flickers

of ‘Oh yeah, I remember that

sound.’ ” And, happy as he was

on his couch, what’s even better

is being back in the game. “It’s

great to be in a movie that works

and that’s funny,” says Murphy.

“That’s the only reason why I’m

making movies. I want to be in

one that people like, and it’s been

a long time since I’ve had one.

This is a well-made movie and

it’s f---ing funny—and that’s a

good feeling.” —Derek Lawrence

EDDIE MURPHY REALLY LOVES

kicking back on his sofa—it’s one
reason he’s made just two films
in the past eight years. “I was
tired,” says Murphy, who churned
out comedy blockbusters in the
’90s. But in 2015, the 58-year-old
stand-up icon was awarded the
Mark Twain Prize for American
Humor, and knowing that a slew
of contemporaries would be at the
ceremony, he sat down and wrote
new material for the first time
since stepping back from the
comedy scene. The reaction blew
him away. “When you get that
Mark Twain Prize, you get to meet
the president, and I met Obama
and the first thing out of his
mouth was ‘When are you doing
stand-up again?’ I was like,
‘Wow,’ ” Murphy says with a laugh.
“Between that and the award,
I was ready to get back.”
It’s not the first time Hollywood’s
been primed for an Eddie-ssance.
His turn in 2006’s Dreamgirls
earned him an Oscar nod; he
made another awards bid with
the 2016 drama Mr. Church,
which, despite praise for his
performance, fizzled at the box
office. “I didn’t want to end on
Mr. Church,” he says. “I wanted
to do something where, if I decided
to never get off the couch again
and just go do stand-up, it would
be a nice way to go out.”
And that something came cour-
tesy of another comedy pioneer.

Murphy had long wanted to

develop the story of Rudy Ray

Moore, a trailblazing comedian

who created one of the more bizarre

personas of the blaxploitation era:

Dolemite, an expletive-spewing

pimp character Moore invented

as a comic and brought to the big

screen in 1975. Dolemite, the movie,

was made for peanuts, starred

many of Moore’s pals, and was

written off as a total mess by

critics—but it somehow spawned

sequels and became a cult phe-

nomenon for its raunchy ghetto

humor and brazen tackiness.

“Richard Pryor is the ceiling of

the art of being funny, and this

[guy] is the whole other side of

the spectrum,” says Murphy, who

blames the 2002 misfire The

Adventures of Pluto Nash (“or some

s--- like that”) for keeping his plans

to make a Moore biopic in 15 years

of development hell. Netflix came

to Murphy’s rescue, and the result,

Dolemite Is My Name, is available

to stream Oct. 25. “He believes

in himself, and that’s why his stuff

works,” Murphy says of Moore,

who died in 2008. “I thought the

MOVIES

I’M STILL ME. I KNOW

I’M STILL FUNNY.”

—EDDIE MURPHY

Dolemite

Is My Name

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