Hello, my name is Justin DeCleuton. I'm here today with Neil Sloan.

And today, we're talking about Eddie Murphy, actor, performer, phenomenon that I was having a lot of difficulty understanding what made me understand who he was when I was a teenager. Like, what movie did I love? Because I'd never watched any of his classics when I was a kid. My girl loves to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time. Sorry, I just wanted to do that. That was his hit single from the 80s. Oh, of course. I was a big Eddie Murphy, the musician fan, more than anything else. Did you listen to a stand-up that, like, made you go, oh, yeah, is Eddie Murphy guy. He's awesome. Well, Eddie Murphy was huge again in the 90s. He was one of the big comedy guys. But were you a fan of, like, the Nutty Professor? I would say so. I mean, the Nutty Professor was the first one I saw, and that was everywhere in

96, 97. And then he did Dr. Doolittle. Then there was, you know, he did the voice in like

Moulon and Bowfinger and Shrek. Shrek was really big, yeah. Gigantic. But also, we've said this on the

podcast before that Saturday Night Live used to play on the comedy channel in Canada. Like,

it played right after school when I was a kid. So I saw the whole Eddie Murphy era. And Saturday

Night Live was the bedrock of Eddie Murphy's superstardom. And it's probably still where he was

at his best. I mean, he was 19 years old when he joined Saturday Night Live.

That is wild.

Now, we're doing Eddie Murphy because he's kind of back in the news a little bit because

he has the Coming to America sequel out, which is not very good.

And he's doing a press tour, which is very rare for him.

And I was interested in doing Eddie Murphy because, you know,

on the one hand, he's one of the funniest people ever. Few people contain that much

radioactive comedy in their veins. But he's also someone who very rarely feels the need to be funny,

you know? This has led to a lot of very bad movies, movies that he has phoned in, movies

where he seems to show contempt for his talent. But in recent years, I think it's also given him

a strange mystique because he doesn't act much anymore. And there's a sense that he's holding back.

And I think this sense was also kind of prevalent

when the Nutty Professor came out because that was a huge hit in 1996. And it came after a period

in his career where there was a slump when he was making unsuccessful movies like Vampire

and Brooklyn. People were writing him off. And then all of a sudden the Nutty Professor came out

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