On a recent afternoon, Eddie Murphy reflected on how much the world around him has changed in the past few years.
“It’s not just comedy — it’s a brand-new world,” Murphy mused in the restaurant of a Beverly Hills hotel, dressed all in black, his manner far more serious and composed than his often outsized, extroverted comic persona might suggest.
“Remember back in the days when they said the Mayan calendar said it was going to be the end of the world?” he went on, warming to the subject. “Everybody waited and it passed … . But the world ended. If you think about the world the way it was just 10 years ago, everything is the opposite of what it was. All these people who were a really strong, important part of the world — like Muhammad Ali and Prince — passed away. Now people are figuring out what the new normal is.”
More than three decades after he rocketed to fame, Murphy himself, at 55, is figuring out what his own new normal is.
Early in his career, when he exploded out of Saturday Night Live and starred in a string of smash hits such as 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places, Murphy’s electrifying charisma — which in person he masks behind a cool reserve, like a superhero wearing a blazer and tie over his spandex suit — was like nothing audiences had ever seen. The idea of anyone ever getting bored with him seemed inconceivable.
But somewhere along the way in Murphy’s roller coaster of a career, his on-screen persona started to drift away from that dangerous young comedian who had once prowled the stage clad in tight red leather. Too often, by his own admission, he chose films more on the basis of how much they paid than how inspired he felt by them. He racked up plenty of huge hits, including The Nutty Professor and Shrek, but to many longtime fans he seemed too willing to coast in films that weren’t worthy of his tremendous talent.
About five years ago, Murphy decided he needed a break. He had made a huge splash with his Oscar-nominated turn in the 2006 musical Dreamgirls only to follow that triumph with a string of largely forgettable duds such as Meet Dave, Imagine That and A Thousand Words.
It was time to reassess his priorities and recharge his creative batteries. He told people, half-jokingly, that he was retired. The truth was, in his mind, the audience needed a breather just as much as he did.
“I got on Saturday Night Live when I was 18 or 19, so it’s been 35 years of my face,” Murphy said. “You get sick of looking at people’s faces — I know I do. There are people whose faces pop up and I just turn the channel. And I was like: ‘I’m sure I’m that to some people.’ ”
As the first African-American global box-office star, one whose films have collectively earned nearly $7 billion US at the box office, Murphy had helped pave the way for many to follow, from Will Smith to Chris Rock to Kevin Hart. But in an increasingly fragmented, perpetually distracted cultural landscape, he had started to wonder, what was the place for a comedy performer such as him?
Murphy was enjoying his respite from the movie business and mulling a return to stand-up comedy — an idea he has flirted with for years without pulling the trigger — when out of the blue he received a script for a family drama called Mr. Church about a kind but enigmatic cook who takes care of a cancer-stricken single mother and her daughter.
The project, to which Samuel L. Jackson had initially been attached, was even further outside of Murphy’s usual wheelhouse than Dreamgirls, which had brought him a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his turn as a talented but embittered soul singer. But that was exactly what drew him to it.
“Dreamgirls has some dra-matic things, but it was a really showy role and it’s got funny stuff in it,” Murphy said. “What was exciting for me about Mr. Church was you have to have this whole performance where everything is the opposite of what I usually do. I don’t get offered stuff where it’s just about relationships and family and love.” He chuckled. “It’s like: ‘It’s about a family.’ ‘OK, and are there any animals talking in it?’ ”
Mr. Church, which opens Sept. 16, is more than just another detour into dramatic territory for Murphy. It’s a chance, after a long absence from the screen, to reintroduce himself to audiences on new terms.
“I think [of] me not doing a movie for five or six years and now doing something like this will be a good thing, ultimately,” Murphy said. “Because I’m doing something that people have never seen me do.
“Five years ago, I was like: ‘It’s time to do stuff that I feel good about and that I get — I don’t have to do these movies just for this big check,’ ” he continued. “That’s hard because I’m from the Tilden projects in Brooklyn.” He harked back to one of his most notorious flops, 2002’s sci-fi comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash. “You wave a big check in front of me and it’s like: ‘You say you want to do Pluto Nash 2? OK, let’s go! So he’s on the moon again?’ ”
Mr. Church screenwriter Susan McMartin, who based the script on her own real-life friendship with a man who’d helped care for her and her mother, says she had seen glimpses of Murphy’s potential as a dramatic actor in even some of his broadest comedies.
“There’s a scene in The Nutty Professor where his character is being heckled that always broke my heart,” McMartin said. “There’s so much vulnerability in his face: the embarrassment, the trying to smile through that pain. In that moment, I was like: ‘That man is such an incredible actor.’ ”
While early reviews for Mr. Church have been mixed, Murphy’s understated turn, which is the kind of surprising pivot that often stirs awards chatter, has drawn widespread praise.
“From the moment he first appears on the screen, people just accept that he’s the character,” said the film’s director, Bruce Beresford, who also directed 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy, with which Mr. Church has been compared. “He’s so commanding and so believable, you don’t think: ‘There’s Eddie, the famous comedian.’ ”
An an earlier point in his career, when he was the cocky young star nicknamed “Money” by his friends, Murphy says he wouldn’t have been emotionally open and vulnerable enough to take on a film like Mr. Church. “I’m a much mushier person than I was when I was 20,” he said. “If I read this when I was 20, I would have just been like: ‘This ain’t funny!’ Now I weep when I read it.”
Like his introverted character in Mr. Church, Murphy — who lives in a sprawling mansion in the Hollywood Hills — fiercely guards his privacy.
When his box office winning streak hit a wall in the early 1990s with flops including Beverly Hills Cop III and A Vampire in Brooklyn, he began to collect some baggage: a high-profile tabloid scandal in 1997 involving a prostitute, a reputation for being moody and sometimes difficult.
As the years passed, he began to be seen as something of a recluse. But while Murphy spurns social media and says he doesn’t use a computer or email, he insists that that image is overblown.
“Just because I’m not at the awards shows and stuff, they think I’m reclusive,” Murphy said. “I’m out every day.” He pointed out that he recently had a baby — his ninth child — with girlfriend Paige Butcher. (His other children are from previous relationships.) “Recluses don’t be having babies at 55,” he cracked, deadpan.
Even if Murphy has not been entirely disengaged from Hollywood, though, in recent years the tectonic plates of the film industry have shifted beneath him. The era in which comedies were largely built around A-list stars such as Murphy or Robin Williams or Jim Carrey has given way to one based more on concept-driven ensemble films.
“Now it’s more of a situation,” Murphy said. “It’s a group of people going on a trip together.”
The fact is, in today’s tentpole-driven studio system, comedies — which, like adult-oriented dramas, typically have less international appeal — have largely taken a backseat to effects-driven spectacles.
“Right now, visual effects have the mic,” Murphy said. “It used to be story was king, and for the first time ever story is not king. I remember my 16-year-old daughter was talking to her friend and he was telling her this long story. She goes: ‘I don’t want to know the story — just tell me what happened.’ That’s audiences. They sit and watch these Vines and these little snippets where people are falling down the steps. That’s 80 per cent of entertainment now.”
