<\/p>\n
Eddie Murphy opens up in his Netflix documentary \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d about his decision to stay away from \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d for decades. It all stemmed from a joke David Spade made on \u201cSNL\u201d in 1995 about Murphy\u2019s struggling movie career. Murphy previously called the joke<\/a> \u201cracist,\u201d but he says in the doc that his anger was toward the show at large and not Spade directly. \u201cSNL\u201d made Murphy a comedy star and Murphy revitalized \u201cSNL\u2019s\u201d ratings when he was a cast member from 1980 to 1984.<\/p>\n About a decade into Murphy\u2019s post-\u201cSNL\u201d blockbuster movie career, he experienced a box office flop with the Wes Craven-directed horror movie \u201cVampire in Brooklyn.\u201d Spade joked about the movie\u2019s poor reception on \u201cSNL\u201d when he said on \u201cWeekend Update\u201d: \u201cLook, children, it\u2019s a falling star. Make a wish! You make a Hollywood minute omelet, you break some eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI just had \u2018Vampire in Brooklyn\u2019 come out,\u201d Murphy says in the doc (via The Daily Beast<\/a>). \u201cThe audience there said \u2018Boo\u2019 and hissed at him for saying it, right? So I was like, hurt. My feelings was hurt. I\u2019m from the same\u2026 It\u2019s like your alma mater taking a shot at you\u2014at my career, not how funny I was, calling me \u2018a falling star.\u2019 If there was a joke like that right now, and it was about some other \u2018SNL\u2019 cast member, and it was about how fucked up their career was, it would get shot down.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe joke had went through all of those channels that the joke has to go through, and then he was on the air saying, \u2018Catch a falling star,\u2019\u201d Murphy continued. \u201cSo I wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Fuck David Spade.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Oh, fuck \u201cSNL.\u201d Fuck y\u2019all. How y\u2019all going to do this shit? That\u2019s what y\u2019all think of me? Oh, you dirty motherfuckers.\u2019 I was like that. And that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t go back for years.\u201d<\/p>\n Spade wrote in his 2015 memoir that the reaction to his Murphy joke was \u201cso much worse than I had imagined,\u201d adding: \u201cI wanted to apologize, explain the joke, anything, but nothing came out. Here was one of my favorite comedians of all time ripping me a new asshole. I had worshipped this dude for years, knew every line of his stand-up. And now he hated me. Like, really really hated me. It was horrible. I didn\u2019t hate him. Of course not. He just got caught in friendly fire and my deep desire to make an impression on my bosses and keep my job. How pathetic.\u201d<\/p>\n Murphy stayed away from \u201cSNL\u201d for decades. He first returned to the show for a brief appearance at the \u201cSNL\u201d 40th anniversary special in 2015, then came back in full to host the show\u2019s 2019 Christmas episode.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, you know what? Fuck this.\u00a0\u2018SNL\u2019\u00a0is part of my history,\u201d Murphy says in the doc about coming back. \u201cI need to reconnect with that show because that\u2019s where I come from. That little friction that I had with\u00a0\u2018SNL\u2019\u00a0was 35 years ago. I don\u2019t have no smoke with no David Spade. I don\u2019t have any heat or none of that with nobody..\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d is now available to stream on Netflix.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eddie Murphy opens up in his Netflix documentary \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d about his decision to stay away from \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d for decades. It all stemmed from a joke David Spade made on \u201cSNL\u201d in 1995 about Murphy\u2019s struggling movie career. Murphy previously called the joke \u201cracist,\u201d but he says in the doc that his anger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2154475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[313250,305348,21890,401552],"class_list":["post-2154474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-david-spade","tag-eddie-murphy","tag-saturday-night-live","tag-vampire-in-brooklyn"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Eddie-Murphy-Refused-to-Go-on-\u2018SNL-for-Decades-Because.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154476,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154474\/revisions\/2154476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2154475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}