Eddie Murphy’s Takeaway From ‘SNL50’: ‘Everybody Was Real Old’
Eddie Murphy, for all the obvious reasons. But one fact in particular caught his attention. “It was a trip,” he told Jennifer Hudson this week on her eponymous talk show. “Because everybody was real old.”
No kidding. Octogenarian Lorne Michaels produced the show, a birthday party attended by 77-year-old Jane Curtin, 81-year-old Chevy Chase and 88-year-old Garrett Morris. Murphy appeared in comedy sketches with youngsters like Will Ferrell and Tracy Morgan, both of whom are pushing 60. Murphy himself is 64, an age that qualifies him for Denny’s senior breakfast menu.
“I got on that show when I was 19 years old,” Murphy said. “I went back, and I saw all these people 40 years later. It was just a trip.”
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“I felt like I was part of something,” the comedian continued. “That show was on for 50 years, so it's this American institution. So when you're in the room, and you see all the different people that were part of the show, I had this really great feeling, like, ‘Wow, I’m a part of this show!’ It was a good feeling. I loved it.”
Hudson asked Murphy what it was like to do his Tracy Morgan impression in front of Tracy Morgan in a Black Jeopardy sketch. Murphy revealed that he was one of the first people to pull off the imitation. “Not a lot of people could do Tracy,” he bragged. “Cool obscure impression to do.” But many people do Morgan now, Murphy complained. It’s the phenomenon “when you do an impression of somebody, then people see you do it, then they do your impression of you doing it,” he explained. “And now a bunch of people do Trace.”
The biggest surprise for Murphy, other than how much everyone aged? That was when Will Ferrell entered the “Scared Straight” sketch in barely-there short-shorts.
Blame Ferrell for not coming to rehearsal, meaning Murphy never got a sneak peek at the comedian’s get-up. “So I saw him on air when he came out, and no, I didn’t expect him to be dressed like that,” he confessed. “So I’m holding (laughter) in the whole time. Very funny. He’s another one that I love, Will Ferrell. Brilliant, so funny.”
Holding in the laughter? Not exactly, as Murphy was breaking character throughout the sketch. Not unusual while he’s making movies, but there, it’s no problem. “I start laughing all the time, you know, in the middle of stuff, and then we just go back and fix it.”
You can’t fix it in a live sketch. Murphy said it’s all good with audiences as long as they know the laughs are real. “Sometimes people do it, and they ain’t really laughing, they be like, fake laughing, and the audience is like, ‘He ain’t really laughing.’”
Kudos to Murphy for not calling out 50-year-old Jimmy Fallon by name.
