Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in ‘Coming to America’
Credit: Everett
Coming to America almost didn’t make it to the big screen.
The 1988 comedy classic starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall was a commercial success, earning $288 million worldwide for Paramount Pictures — but the studio initially passed on the film.
“They turned Coming to America down,” Hall revealed on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. “We went and pitched it at Paramount and they said, ‘No, thank you.’ And we were like, ‘Give us some notes. What should we do?’ And they were like, “We’re not sure, but you know, it’s a fish out of water. We’ve seen this a billion times.'”
Paramount president Ned Tanen did offer constructive feedback: “How about if the people you meet in America are played by Eddie?”
Murphy had shot to fame as a standout on Saturday Night Live, but left in 1984 after four seasons to focus on his film career. All these years later, Tanen reasoned, “Everybody wants to see Eddie do characters again. Everybody misses SNL.”
So Murphy and Hall, an up-and-coming comic, went back to the drawing board. And they came up with the now-iconic barbershop scene, in which Murphy plays not only main character Prince Akeem, but also barbershop owner Clarence and Saul, a Jewish customer.
Hall was still an up-and-coming comic, known for his television appearances. But he says Murphy pitched him to also play multiple characters in addition to Semmi, Akeem’s personal aide, like Reverend Brown, Morris the barber, and “Extremely Ugly Girl.”
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“It’s Eddie that said, ‘hey, I saw Arsenio do stand up on this HBO thing. And he does this thing about Jesse Jackson. I know he can do a great preacher and we can come up with some barbers,’” Hall recalled to O’Brien. “And Eddie came up with the specific characters. And I just sat there shaking because I’m like, I got to do characters with Eddie Murphy… So I was a nervous wreck going into Coming to America.”
Arsenio Hall and Eddie Murphy reunited for ‘Coming 2 America’ in 2021
Credit: Courtesy of Amazon Studios
When the film was released in June 1988, it was a box-office smash and Paramount’s highest-grosser of the year.
The studio planned a sequel, Coming 2 America, set to hit theaters in August 2020. COVID delayed the release, during which Amazon Studios picked up the film for streaming in 2021.
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