David Spade's Saturday Night Live joke still leaves a nasty taste in Eddie Murphy's mouth. The joke was made in the '90s after the actor's 1995 horror film Vampire in Brooklyn flopped at the box office. Eddie described the part of David's "Hollywood Minute" sketch as "a cheap shot" and "racist." David took a jab at Eddie's supposedly failing career at the time after a photo of the actor popped up on the screen. "Look children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish," David said in the skit.
In an interview published in The New York Times, Eddie, 63, opened up about how the joke made him feel. "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," he said.
"This is Saturday Night Live. I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show," he continued. "The show would have been off the air if I didn’t go back on the show, and now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career?"
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Eddie continued to share that he believes the joke had to have been pre-approved before it was cleared to be said on-air. "And I know that he can’t just say that. A joke has to go through these channels," he explained. "So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career. Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers."
"It was personal. It was like, 'Yo, how could you do that?' My career? Really? A joke about my career?" Eddie said. "So I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought — I felt it was racist." After the joke, the actor didn't reappear on the show for 30 years.
In 2015, he appeared on SNL for the 40th anniversary special, and in 2019 he returned as a host for the show. "In the long run, it’s all good," he said during his interview. "Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL. I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love."
David opened up about the joke in his 2015 memoir Almost Interesting. He recalled getting a call from Eddie after the sketch and explained that he instantly felt bad about the "stupid joke" he'd made. "I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one," he wrote. "Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that [expletive] staaaangs. And it can add up quickly."
During the interview, Eddie also talked about how in the 1980s the press was "relentless on me, and a lot of it was racist stuff." He explained, "Just think about it: Ronald Reagan was the president, and it was that America. You would do interviews, and you’re like: 'I didn’t say that. I don’t talk that way.'"
"They would be writing it in this weird ghetto — I used to have weird [expletive] that would go on. Then I got really popular, and there was this negative backlash that comes with it," he said. "It’s like, I was the only one out there. I’m this young, rich, Black one. Everybody wasn’t happy about that in 1983. Even Black folks. You’d get cheap shots from your people."
