Nearly a decade after the event, Eddie Murphy is recalling the reason he left the 2007 Oscars after he lost the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Murphy famously didn’t stick around at the ceremony after failing to win the trophy for his role as James “Thunder” Early in Dreamgirls.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Murphy explained that he didn’t leave the awards event because he was upset; he just didn’t want to be ‘the sympathy guy all night.”
“What happened was I was at the Oscars, I had lost, and then people kept coming over to me and kept [patting] me on the shoulder,” Murphy recalled. “Clint Eastwood came and rubbed my shoulder. And I was like, ‘Oh, no, no, I’m not gonna be this guy all night. Let’s just leave.’ I didn’t storm out. I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be the sympathy guy all night.'”
The winner for Best Supporting Actor that year was Alan Arkin for his role in Little Miss Sunshine. Murphy suggested that he predicted Arkin would get the Oscar Award after seeing an early screening of the film and being blown away by the actor’s performance.
“Jeff Katzenberg invited me over to see Little Miss Sunshine six months before it came out in the theaters, and I literally watched the movie and I watched Alan—and I hadn’t been nominated or anything yet—and I watched the movie and I turned to Jeff afterwards and I said, ‘Now that performance right there is one of those performances that will steal somebody’s Oscar.’ I said those exact words,” Murphy recalled. “I was like, ‘He could steal somebody’s Oscar,’ then he stole mine.”
Though Murphy didn’t win for Dreamgirls, the film took home trophies for two of the eight categories it was nominated for: Best Achievement and Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actress (for Jennifer Hudson).
The Coming to America star has been strolling memory lane after the release last year of his documentary, Being Eddie, that recalled other moments throughout his career, including his talent for doing impressions of other comedians via puppets.