The big thing was going back to ‘Saturday Night Live.’ We was on a high. I said, ‘OK, let me get off this couch I’ve been on for eight years. “I had gotten off the couch to go to work. Those plans haven’t been canceled when live performance returns, Murphy says, “then we’ll do stand-up.” Until then, Murphy, a proud homebody, has found himself back where he started. A long-awaited return to performing in 2020 had been his intention before the pandemic hit. “If you’re ever around Eddie and his kids - and now his grandchild - you see that he’s truly a man who loves his family and does not need the public’s constant validation and appreciation to know who he is.”įamily life figures prominently in Murphy’s newer stand-up material. But there’s something to that,” says Brewer. “He joked about it on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ about him versus Cosby and who’s America’s favorite dad now. His daughter, Bella, has a small role in the film. Murphy was just 27 when he made “Coming to America.” Now, he has 10 children and a grandchild. (A scheduling conflict interfered and the versatile Hall, who has four roles in the movie, ended up playing the witch doctor part Chappelle might have.) “One day in the dressing room, Dave is like, ‘I heard ya’ll are doing ‘Coming to America 2.’ I said, ‘Yeah, man.’ He said, ‘I want to be in that,’” recalls Hall. Hall, who had been doing stand-up with Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, sensed everyone wanted in. The movie reunites most of the original cast - including James Earl Jones, John Amos and Shari Headley - and brings in many others, too, including Wesley Snipes, Leslie Jones and Tracy Morgan. The shoot took place on the Tyler Perry Studio sound stages, with Rick Ross’ nearby mansion serving as the Zamunda palace. “All of a sudden I’m reading this script that I love and I realize this movie that we thought we never were going to do a sequel to, we’re about to head to Atlanta - which is America’s Africa,” says Hall. But they went decades before talking about a sequel. Murphy estimates the close friends have seen each other two or three times a week for 40 years. “Coming 2 America” also rekindles the great comedic chemistry between Murphy and Hall. At the barbershop, where Murphy and Hall also reprise their characters, the conversation bounces from Teslas to transgender people. There’s a plot of female empowerment KiKi Layne plays Akeem’s daughter. (A few notable R&B and hip-hop groups make cameos.) “Coming 2 America,” directed by Craig Brewer, reverses the fish-out-water plot to bring Queens to Zamunda after Akeem learns he fathered a son (Jermaine Fowler) on his first visit to New York. It’s an unlikely coda to a blockbuster comedy, one that belongs so completely to the late ’80s that even the sequel tries to keep some of that era’s spirit. The sequel, originally planned to hit theaters last year, was sold due of the pandemic by Paramount Pictures to Amazon, where it will begin streaming Friday. Thirty-three years after “Coming to America,” Murphy and Hall have returned to Zamunda. “Now I take nothing for granted and appreciate everything.” You take everything for granted when you’re young, how successful I was,” Murphy says, speaking by Zoom with a shelf of award statuettes behind him. “I was so young, all this stuff was happening.
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