Eddie Murphy might be one of the most celebrated cast members in Saturday Night Live history, but it's also no secret the comedian has something of a complicated relationship with the iconic NBC sketch comedy.
Initially appearing as a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984, the young Murphy managed to become one of the most popular breakout stars of his era. Through his unrivaled comedic antics and fan-favorite recurring characters, Murphy managed to secure SNL's very existence well into the future.
Though an integral reason behind the show's success in the early 1980s, Murphy nevertheless refused to appear on SNL following what he viewed as a mean-spirited joke made in the mid '90s.
According to Variety, Murphy spoke about his anger toward Saturday Night Live's showrunners for a 1995 "Weekend Update" segment featuring David Spade. In said segment, Spade joked about Murphy's recent critically panned release, Vampire in Brooklyn, leading him to show a picture of Murphy and state, “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish!"
As Murphy remembers in the new Netflix documentary, Being Eddie, Spade's joke wound up offending him on a deeply personal level.
“I just had Vampire in Brooklyn come out,” the Coming to America star said. “The audience there said ‘Boo’ and hissed at him for saying it, right? So I was like, hurt. My feelings was hurt. I’m from the same… It’s like your alma mater taking a shot at you — at my career, not how funny I was, calling me ‘a falling star.’ If there was a joke like that right now, and it was about some other SNL cast member, and it was about how f**ked up their career was, it would get shot down.”
“The joke had went through all of those channels that the joke has to go through, and then he was on the air saying, ‘Catch a falling star,’” Murphy went on to say. “So I wasn’t like, ‘F**k David Spade.’ I was like, ‘Oh, f**k SNL. F**k y’all. How y’all going to do this shit? That’s what y’all think of me? Oh, you dirty motherf**kers.’ I was like that. And that’s why I didn’t go back for years.”