At the end of the new Netflix documentary Being Eddie, Eddie Murphy receives a package he’s visibly excited to open. “Oh, I know what this is. Those are ventriloquist dummies,” he says, before gingerly pulling out an old-school puppet of Bill Cosby, followed by one of Richard Pryor. Then come Paul Mooney and Val Young, and Murphy immediately starts improvising with all of them.
The scene lasts less than three minutes, but it’s both hilarious and strangely touching — Murphy cracking himself up, proudly showing off the puppets like a kid doing show-and-tell. It’s no surprise the moment went viral.
So I reached out to the man behind the Pryor and Cosby puppets: Steve Axtell, founder of Axtell Expressions, who was more than happy to share how he came to make them for Murphy.
To get started, tell me about Axtell Expressions.
When I was a kid, I was really into puppets. I made copies of the Jim Henson Muppets when I was 14 in a local newspaper. My mom sent the article to Jim Henson, hoping he would offer me a job. I got a letter back from their legal department saying, “Hey, don’t copy us, but you have a lot of talent and you should meet other puppeteers and find your own look.” That kind of got me going.
I went into my teens and my young adulthood performing on weekends, doing puppet and magic shows. Then I got into psychology and my wife and I started our own business in 1992 making puppets for therapy, including for autism. Over the years we’ve grown into a worldwide puppet empire across 80 countries with star puppets on stage and TV.
I worked with Dreamworks to make the Madagascar puppets. We worked with Shaq, who ordered a custom puppet of himself. Now we’re working with animatronics and they speak with artificial intelligence. We’ve got some real cutting edge stuff going. Plus, a few years ago, I got this call from Sesame Street and they said, “Steve, we want you to know how much you inspire us.” I thought that was an amazing full circle.
To skip ahead, can you tell me how those puppets for Eddie Murphy came about?
During the production of that documentary, I got a call from a producer named Terry Leonard. He was working on a documentary with a certain star but wouldn’t tell me who. They wanted puppets that were reminiscent of the old Danny O’Day ventriloquist dummies. That’s a unique style and it’s an old style. Normally, I don’t build hard dummies, but they wanted them and they wanted them to be of Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. They wouldn’t tell me who this was for, but I was thinking, “Who does those two voices? Eddie Murphy.” I even said to them, “That’s got to be Eddie Murphy,” but they wouldn’t tell me.
It was a very quick turnaround — two weeks — so the sculpting was done digitally and then I 3D-printed them. It was so fun getting their little hands and all the clothes right. I loved the simplicity of it. They wanted just those static heads with a moving mouth, so I put a head stick inside of them so you could reach into the body and control them.
After I shipped them, I never heard anything else until it came out on Netflix. That’s when I get a text from the producer, Terry Leonard, and he says, “Steve, I just want to let you know that the documentary Being Eddie comes out tonight on Netflix. And you were right, it was Eddie Murphy all along.”
Did you also make the puppets of Paul Mooney and Val Young that he had?
No, I didn’t and I didn’t make the one that Jimmy Kimmel gave to Eddie on his show — the one of Eddie Murphy himself. From what I understand, at the beginning when they were shooting the documentary, Eddie got the Paul Mooney puppet and showed it to the producers and said, “I’ve got a Paul Mooney puppet. I started with ventriloquism. Man, if I had Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, that would be fantastic.” They made a mental note of it and contacted me early on to make them and then they surprised Eddie with them for the documentary.
What’s all this attention on the puppets been like for you?
My social media has exploded. I’m getting thousands of new followers and friend requests. I’m also building another Richard Pryor for the Richard Pryor estate. I’m kind of hoping Eddie Murphy orders Redd Foxx and a whole bunch of other ones because most people online are saying, “If Eddie would ever come out from retirement with those puppets, what a show that would be!”
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