Being Eddie

0:00Rebecca Lavoie:I'm Rebecca Lavoie and this is You Can't Make This Up.

0:14Rebecca Lavoie:You Can't Make This Up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind your favorite Netflix documentaries and films. On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix documentary film Being Eddie. I've done all kinds of stuff. I can't think of another actor, a dramatic actor, black-white, that's done so many different types of things. Today we're talking to director Angus Wall. In the 1980s, there were few stars bigger than Eddie Murphy. After bursting onto the scene as the 19-year-old breakout cast member on Saturday Night Live, Murphy made some of the most iconic movies of the decade.

0:52Rebecca Lavoie:His stand-up routines were legendary, and he even had a top-ten record. But he pivoted away from raunchy material to family-friendly fare, both on the screen and at home. And after some time away from the spotlight, he's back to make people laugh again. The Netflix documentary Being Eddie looks at Murphy's remarkable life, from superstardom to career lows and back again. For the first time, he tells his own story about his varied artistic choices, avoiding celebrity pitfalls, and living as a dad in a homebody. The film features interviews with legendary comedians who discuss Murphy's legacy and ponder what it must be like being Eddie Murphy.

1:30Rebecca Lavoie:I know a lot of people that survived a lot of weird shit in their lives, but surviving being Eddie Murphy is a hell of an accomplishment.

1:50Rebecca Lavoie:And I'm joined now by director Angus Wall. Angus, thank you so much for joining me on You Can't Make This Up. Thank you so much for having me on. Eddie Murphy is so well-known and loved, but he's been kind of an enigma. So why do you think he was willing to do this documentary?

2:08I, you know, it's funny. There's a quote where he's talking to Letterman. I mean, I thought there we saw the real Eddie Murphy. The real me. Yeah, you can act, you can sing, you're getting it done, my friend. That was a fun movie. I had to do a lot of different stuff. But that wasn't me. That's not the real me. I've never been the real me ever on screen. Well, what is the real you, for God's sakes? I think it was time. You know, it's a good question. I never really asked him why he wanted to do it. Just sort of assume that when somebody is complicit in making a movie like this, that they have a desire to tell their story or get more of their story out there.

2:45And I think that's the case with him. And I think he's been in show business almost 50 years. And I think people are really curious about him, to your point.

2:53Rebecca Lavoie:You've got a murderer's row of comedians talking about Eddie. Some are contemporaries and some were inspired by him. Jerry Seinfeld in particular said the rules are different for Eddie Murphy. What do you think he meant by that? I think he means that Eddie is so gifted and so talented and has been that way kind of out of the gate. And I think that a lot of people have said that about him. This is a strange anecdote, but I'll share an anecdote with you. I was talking to Eddie and I had this uncanny feeling, very similar to talking to David Fincher, I've done a lot of work with in the past. And I told Eddie that and he kind of went, huh, he didn't really react to that.

3:35But what was interesting is I realized that both of them are people that knew really out of the gate who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do in the world. And they were very, very clear. And Eddie talks about that in the movie. And I think that's kind of the quality that he embodies. And, you know, most of us have to find our way. And if life is about self-remembering, it's like sometimes it takes a long time to remember who you are. He remembered really early and he just went for it. And I think he, cover his early life and how clear he was about that.

4:07Rebecca Lavoie:Can you talk about his early life? Because I think if, you know, if you came here from Mars and you only watched his stand up from, you know, the 80s, you would think it was ice cream trucks and, you know, all that stuff. What was his childhood like? He had kind of a broken childhood, actually. And we don't get into all the detail. You know, whenever you're working on a movie about somebody like Eddie, I mean, there's really nobody like Eddie, but with somebody who has such a long story, you can't tell every single beat of their story. His parents were really young. They split up when he was very, very young.

4:42His dad was a cop. And, you know, it's wild because they found these photos of his father just towards the end of making the movie. And he shared those with his whole family and they'd never seen his father. His father was a policeman and like the life of the party. And his parents, I think, were 18 when they married and they had his brother and him, they split up and his father was actually killed by a woman, which we talk about in the movie. And his mother became very, very ill. And he and his

5:15Rebecca Lavoie:brother, Charlie, had to go into foster care, which I did talk to him about, but we didn't put it in the movie. It's like, you know, there's so much story to tell, but that's one of the beats that we did not include in the movie. And the woman they stayed with was apparently fairly terrifying. But I think, you know, that his relationship with his brother is so central to his life. And I think it really informs his relationship to a lot of people. I think you feel from the interviews in the movie that he has a deeply fraternal relationship with a lot of the comedians that are in the movie talking about him, you know, and his mother then met his stepfather who he also calls his father, Vernon Lynch.

5:57And he talks about how Vernon Lynch was his role model in terms of how to be a man. I think when you look at Eddie's life, that contact with Vernon Lynch was really essential. Eddie's such a family man. And you see that like that was something he always wanted to be. And I think that's something that he learned a lot from Vernon about.

6:16Rebecca Lavoie:Eddie Murphy comes across as shy, as introverted, as quiet. Do you think people will be surprised to see what he is like to sit down and talk to? I do think people will be surprised experiencing the movie. You know, it's interesting. We've been making this movie for, I joke, longer than World War II, which is, we started making this movie in 2019. So I've been sitting with this for five years. So there is a big part of Eddie that is very introverted. Sorry, it's an interesting question because he's introverted and he's not introverted. I mean, in his life, I think he's really introverted. But I think on screen, he's just, he leaves it all on the field, if you will.

7:01But he puts everything into his work. You know, SNL in December 2019. And we all know what happened right after that. You know, it's like, how are we going to make this movie when nobody can go anywhere and nobody can actually be in a room with anybody else? So we ended up setting up two cameras and a mic in his house, in a room in his house. And we just left that and some lights in his house. And we just left that there, I don't know, for like a year and a half. You know, I think everybody got accustomed to being on Zoom calls then. So a lot of the movie came from just talking to him. I was literally my face on an iPad that he was looking at in his house.

7:46And we would talk. I mean, we had, I don't know, seven, eight, nine conversations. Well, many of them three or four hours long. You get a flavor of that introvert in that just because of the situation.

7:57Rebecca Lavoie:But there's also an intimacy that came from that. There's a, I don't know if I call it a vulnerability, but he was very, very open. And I think he was I think he's just been really ready to tell his full story. I mean, otherwise, we wouldn't we wouldn't have made this movie if he if he wasn't ready to do that. Right. So let's talk about his legacy on Saturday Night Live, you know, way before the 2019 reappearance, which I promise we'll talk about. Of 172 cast members, most listicles have him at number one, sometimes number two, very often number one. that leaving it all in the field, how is he able to command that?

8:34Rebecca Lavoie:How is he able to command that show like nobody else ever has? I think Chris Rock sums it up really well. He can be in character and he can also be himself. He's so incredibly versatile. And, you know, again, there's another clip on Letterman. What were you like when you were nine years old? Did you know what you would do? Had the notion crystallized in your head at nine, what you were going to do? I did a lot of voices, but I didn't know I wanted to one day go into show business. I was just, you know, strange child. My mother used to say, who's Eddie? What voice is Eddie's voice? You know, Eddie's always been able to completely embody people, not even impersonate them, but just embody them.

9:11And he does it in the movie. And when he would do it, he's just like, of course you laugh because it's incredibly funny. But it's also this really uncanny experience of seeing this person actually just become Lon Chaney. It's like become Jesse Jackson. I mean, it's just like, you're like, how do you do this? And he has had that ability since he was a kid. and you see that on SNL. He just becomes all these different characters. The other piece of it is he's so insightful. Part of the conversation I had with Seinfeld was Eddie's somebody who can kind of be in a situation but also be above it looking down at it.

9:46You know, he has those different points of view. He can sort of be on the physical plane which is how he would maybe describe it and he does in the movie. But he's also on this higher plane where he's actually seeing everything that's going on and he has that level of awareness. And I think that's, you know, when he was 19 and on SNL, I think I remember hearing about it and then seeing him. And it's like he's just like riveting to watch.

10:08Rebecca Lavoie:Yeah. I mean, he can act. I think it's important to point out that not very many stand up comedians have transitioned to the world of acting other than playing characters that are sort of similar to how they are in stand up. Right. The only other person that kind of comes to mind for me is maybe Jamie Foxx, who obviously is also a great actor. But Eddie Murphy, I think his acting is actually underestimated. Do you agree? A hundred percent. And part of the movie, like hopefully people get that when they see the movie. It's like he's an incredible actor. If you watch that scene, that's better than any action star you've ever seen.

10:43Rebecca Lavoie:And the way he handles it. And just before that, he had you cracking up. He was talking about just being an artist and he can express himself in a lot of different ways. I think when somebody hits that big, when they're that young, people tend to think of them in that role. I was particularly interested in this because I love the idea of someone being an artist, but just inhabiting a role for certain projects. That really resonates for me. you know, and I think people like to put people in a box. And I think he kind of got put in a, it was a great box, but it was a box of being an incredibly funny performer doing standup.

11:17So when he really transitioned into acting, I think people were like, well, where's the funny guy? Where's the like standup guy? What's interesting about him is he's continually reinvented himself. And he talks about in the movie where he says, you know, I'm not on a rowboat, I'm on a sailboat. And I'm like, I'm just going to catch this breeze over here. And I think that really sums up his creative approach to his work. He says in the movie, I can express myself a number of different ways. You know, we didn't put it in the movie, but he was talking about, it's like a painter, like some painters paint with color and he would equate himself with painting with light.

11:55Right. And I think that there's a very different psychology. There's a very different approach to work there. You want to include every single piece of these things that someone like Eddie says, you just can't include everything. And that was one that I thought was really, really interesting, how attuned he is to creativity in general.

12:14Rebecca Lavoie:You know, the film does make the point that he changed the way Hollywood perceived Black performers. But as Eddie's star grew, it seemed to be at the expense of another Black performer, no fault of Eddie's, because of the system. Why did the industry think the stage was only big enough for one black comedian to be on the big screen? Well, I think the simple answer is racism. Yeah. I mean, clearly it's a preconception about what people can do and a preconception about what opportunities should be given to people. And, you know, Hollywood is really, really hard. And, you know, a lot of people find success in Hollywood because they like just stay at it.

12:56And they eventually, you know, you see a lot of actors who they get their shot when they're in their 40s and everybody's like, God, this person came out of nowhere. But it's like a lot of times it's somebody who's been at it since they were in their teens or their 20s. Eddie, I had a conversation with Eddie and he used this phrase that I thought was really interesting, which is, I don't want to memorialize the darkness.

13:18Rebecca Lavoie:Yeah. And I really took that to heart. You know, the film endeavors to not embrace the darkness and I don't think it does. And I think that will resonate with people where they're at right now, because I think this is, I hope this film actually meets the world where it's at right now. Richard Pryor was hurt, you know, not by Eddie necessarily, but by the sense he was being pushed out because of the favor that Eddie Murphy had. How are the two of them able to come to terms with that? I think they really loved each other. I think they really got a charge from each other. I mean, it's like you look at where they were together.

13:59I think there was a deep kinship there and there was a deep sense of respect and love and admiration between them. I think the press likes to make a big thing out of this. Arsenio is very, he speaks to it very directly. That syndrome, that desire to pit black people against each other and make it seem like there's one opportunity.

14:26Rebecca Lavoie:And if one of you want it, you have to go into the Coliseum and destroy the other. You know, I think it's a lot of it is just a it's a cultural thing and it's a it's a press thing. But I don't see that happening with between them on the on the personal plane. But, you know, it's like I don't want to speak for Eddie either. It's like I think a lot of that is a is sort of a manufactured conflict. Eddie Murphy famously swore off Saturday Night Live after David Spade made a joke at his expense. But he talked about how the beef wasn't really with David Spade. Right? So David Spade came on and had a bit called Spade in America, and there was a shot of Eddie's face, and he said, look, kids, catch a falling star.

15:06Rebecca Lavoie:Hmm. And Eddie talks about in the movie, he was deeply offended by it. And he wasn't offended by David Spade. He was offended that the joke had made it all the way through. If there was a joke like that right now, and it was about some other SNL cast member, and it was about how fucked up their career was, it would get shot down. The producers would look at him. We can't, we're not saying a joke. So the joke, it went through all of those channels that the joke has to go through. And then he was on the air saying, you know, catch a falling star. So I wasn't like, fuck David Spade. I was like, oh, fuck SNL.

15:39It must've been incredibly hard for him to see that. It's like after all the success he had to get taken down by basically his, what he calls his alma mater, which is Saturday Night Live. I think it's, I think it was really hard for him. That's the reason he says he didn't go back for a very long time. Eddie is an incredibly high vibe human being. He is a master on the physical plane. And I think he, I would say he's a master on the upper realms as well. And I think he let that beef go with SNL. He talks about it in, you know, when we first find him going to SNL when he's in New York in 2019. And he kind of reclaims his place at SNL.

16:23It was wild because I don't think anybody's filmed in Lauren's office before. And Lauren allowed us to film in his office. There's a meeting that happens, you know, kind of a kickoff meeting that happens at the beginning of the week in Lauren's office. And we were there for that. And that was pretty extraordinary. This is Eddie Murphy.

16:51Rebecca Lavoie:Back at you. It's wild to see Eddie go back. It's like somebody who's going back for their high school reunion in a lot of ways. I think it was very cathartic for, not just for Eddie, but everybody involved. I mean, I think you see the people who are on stage with him at that SNL. and Michael Che talks about them like geeking out, calling their moms that they're gonna be on SNL with Eddie. And it's like, it's kind of the return of the king, if you will.

17:22Rebecca Lavoie:So Eddie Murphy earlier in his career used the F word like Monet used a brush, right? And then he made this really unexpected career turn for a lot of people anyway, away from R-rated material. Why did he do that? I think this goes back to the idea that Eddie is constantly reinventing himself and he's constantly, he's listening to himself. You know, it's funny, on some level, I think Eddie's just really amused by himself. He's kind of a perfect system where he really is entertained by his own mind in a way that I think a lot of people are not but wish they were. you know, he listens to his muses and he listens to his intuition and he follows those muses as far as they'll go.

18:07And, you know, some of those muses end up being movies. They end up being great performances, you know, these ideas. And I think that's just part of his journey. He was talking about, I'm not a rowboat. I'm not in a rowboat. I'm in a sailboat. And I'm like, I'm just going to catch this breeze over here. When he said that, I was like, oh, that's a huge key into his working methodology.

18:27Rebecca Lavoie:Yeah. Eddie Murphy talked a lot about how being a father is like his central roles he's playing now, how having these kids means everything to him. What kind of father is he? Like, what is he like to be around for these kids? He's a great father. I think it's the greatest thing in his life. Somebody asked me once, you know, about movies, you know, about my legacy. Real good. You know, it's my legacy. My legacy is my children. But I didn't work. I really feel like that. He just loves his children. He adores his children. If we could all be so lucky to have a father like Eddie, the world would be a much better place.

19:12He's funny. He's warm. I think he helps guide them where they need to be guided. And he's an embodied example for them as well. I think in the same way that Vernon was kind of a great role model for him, I think he's the same for his children. But he's really, he's really, really active in his children's lives. And a lot of them live with him and they come and stay with him. And that house that's in the movie is like a central hub to everybody's life.

19:37Rebecca Lavoie:It's like a character in the movie, the house, in certain ways. You know, Eddie Murphy's relationship with the house. He shows us some of the house. It's really an incredible place to be able to see him be. Eddie Murphy surely recognizes that the trappings of that kind of fame that he has can lead to self-destruction. And probably the most revealing thing he said. My biggest blessing, my biggest blessing, it's not my comedic talent. My biggest blessing is that I love myself and I knew what I wanted to do really, really early. and that's why I didn't fall into any traps or anything because at the root of it all, I love myself.

20:22Rebecca Lavoie:I've never heard a celebrity phrase it that way. Were you surprised by that? Honestly, I was not surprised. Will Zendarek edited the movie. He's the lead editor on the movie and we had a lot of conversations around that and also about the self-destructive nature of Prince and Michael Jackson and Whitney and how sort of just plain spoken he is about that. For Eddie, those are his contemporaries, Prince Michael Jackson and Whitney, and they all were destroyed and they destroyed themselves. And he talks about, he just doesn't have that self-destructive nature. They have a self-destructive nature, he says.

20:58And when people hear it, I think it's somewhat, it's a bit bracing because people usually don't speak that plainly and clearly. but I actually wasn't surprised at all. I think that's how he survived. He loves himself. Cherise, who works with Eddie and she's a producer on the movie, she had this Us magazine and I was like, oh, this is great. I'm going to go show this to Eddie. I think Cherise was a little surprised that I'd taken the magazine because I'd taken it when she was out of the room and I'd given it to Eddie and he looked at it. He hadn't seen it for, I don't know, 30 years or something if he'd ever seen it.