It was a historic moment just a month ago when Eddie Murphy returned to the Saturday Night Live stage after decades away from the hit series. His career took off when he was added as a cast member at 19-years-old, and when he joined the current cast of comedians to revive his beloved SNL characters, the series brought in its highest ratings for 2019.

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Now that his memoir Living in Color is available for purchase, Tommy Davidson seems to be spilling all the comedy tea. The In Living Color star has been enjoying his run around the press circuit as he shares tidbits of interactions that he’s had with other famous figures throughout his career. He recently claimed that during his stint on In Living Color, Jamie Foxx was a “mean” person who liked to bully him. In a recent interview with The Breakfast Club, Davidson stated that SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels thought hiring Eddie Murphy was a “mistake.”

“We broke the color barrier with In Living Color, but once the success of In Living Color came, like, look at Foxx now,” Davidson said. “That’ll show you right there. Now, there was the...Entertainment Weekly had the hottest shows of the nineties. And we weren’t in there. Not one single picture. Not even my foot. Not even Jennifer [Lopez’s] ass and that’s gon’ be in any frame… So yeah, that was there, because when I broke into the comedy scene, I broke into all the white clubs turning it out. Standing ovations. Killing it.”

He may have been wowing audiences, but he still was being rejected by those with the power to create career shifts. “And what they would tell me is, you’re not the one we want,” he said. “You’re not what we’re looking for. Even with Lorne Michaels, when I came to audition for SNL, he was like, ‘I’m not lookin’ for a black comedian. Eddie Murphy was a mistake.’ I was like… That was supposed to be my audition. And he said, ‘Have a nice day.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, hold on.'”

Davidson added that he didn’t know why Michaels alleged called Murphy a “mistake.” He added, “If you think Eddie was a mistake then what kind of show do you have? He like, saved your show?” Watch Tommy Davidson’s full interview with The Breakfast Club below.

Very rarely do the masses get to witness the resurgence of a comedic genius such as Eddie Murphy. Then again, there aren’t too many comedians and personalities that are as prolific as the Raw creator. In recent months, the Beverly Hills Cop actor made his return to the Saturday Night Live stage, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 25th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards, and made his return to the silver screen starring as Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name. Now, Eddie Murphy is getting candid with the good brothers and sisters of WMagazine in an exclusive one-on-one interview.

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During a brief interview with the publication, Murphy spoke on meeting the legendary, blaxploitation actress Pam Grier for the first time and attempting to hold back his lust. He also spoke on his experience as a youth annoying his mother with his imitations, buying Richard Pryor’s comedy album, his first kiss, and more. 

However, there was one story about his run-in with legendary comedian Rodney Dangerfield that stood out the most during the comedian turned actor’s conversation with W. Murphy reveals that he was able to convince Rodney Dangerfield to watch his comedy set at a Florida comedy club while he was still a young buck in the business. 

According to Murphy, his set was full of “really dirty” and “edgy racial stuff.” Following his act, Murphy approached Dangerfield seeking his advice to which the clean-cut comic responded, “Hey, kid. I don’t know where you’re gonna go with that — the language and the race stuff.” 

After acquiring mainstream success and becoming world-renowned for his “really dirty” standup acts, Murphy revealed the two met again this time in the bathroom of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and while standing next to each other at the urinals, Dangerfield leaned over and said, “Hey, who knew?!”

Check out the five-minute clip of Eddie Murphy charismatically carrying one an unintentionally hilarious conversation with W Magazine and be on the lookout for Eddie Murphy to be hitting the road with brand new material sometime in the near future. 

She may have helped Tyler Perry build a $2 billion franchise, but Mabel Earlene “Madea” Simmons is a character that the media mogul can’t wait to see in the rearview mirror. For years, Perry has shared that he was giving up his beloved Madea character to work on other projects, but after fans publicly expressed how she impacted their lives, Perry continued on with the character.

However, all good things must come to an end, and Madea’s final days are quickly approaching. In an interview with Level, a publication geared toward men of color over 30, Perry was asked if he misses Madea. “Nope. I don’t,” he said matter-of-factly. The interviewer wanted to know if there was even a little part of Perry that wanted to revive his character for one more ’round. “No. We have a few more weeks of the Farewell Tour and then I’m done.”

Madea may have brought in the laughs—and a good-sized bankroll—but she was never a favorite of Perry’s. “It was never something I enjoyed doing,” he said. “My hand to God. I hated the costume, the wig, all of it.” The only reason Perry even thought of doing a female impersonation in his act was because of the successes of another comedy actor.

“I was scared to death!” he said of creating Madea and donning the wardrobe for the first time. “I watched Eddie Murphy and how he did his female characters. I said I’ll try it once and that’s it.” The rest is history. Are you a Madea fan?

Ratings went through the roof when Eddie Murphy made his triumphant return to Saturday Night Live after 30 years away from the show. The series helped shape the comedian’s career into what it is today, and when he made his way back to the stage, Murphy revived some of his beloved SNL characters that have gone down in television history.

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He also sat down with the producers for Stories From the Show: An SNL Series where he chatted one-on-one about his hilarious history with the long-running program. Murphy admitted that for the first year he was on SNL, he was still living at home. After his first appearance, he was so excited that he didn’t even take his makeup off while riding public transportation back to his house. He thought that everyone would recognize him. “No one knew,” he said with a smile. “I probably looked like a very strange young fellow.”

Murphy said that everyone wanted to be on SNL and during his audition, he was told to make the talent coordinator laugh. “I did Muhammad Ali and I did Bill Cosby,” but Murphy failed to bring in even a chuckle. “A couple weeks later, they called me.” Both his Ali and Cosby impressions would make it to the small screen.

Although he took flack for being a new face within the cast, Eddie said he was just a 19-year-old happy to be on TV. “I would still steal,” he admitted, sharing a story of how someone stole his hubcaps off of his car, so he just stole someone else’s hubcaps to replace them. As popular as the show was, critics still weren’t feeling the new members, so the show’s head writer at the time fired everyone except for Murphy and one other person. The only reason the comedian was able to keep his job was that the head writer thought Murphy ate real dog food on the show. Murphy’s not that crazy; it was only hash.

Watch Murphy’s funny walk down Saturday Night Live memory lane below.

The world was taken by surprise when Eddie Murphy announced that he’d be returning to the standup circuit. The award-winning comedian shared that he was working on a standup special, as well, but it looks as if he’s not the only one who is ready to pound the pavement and return to the mic. Jamie Foxx also got his start in entertainment as a standup comedian, and on a recent visit to Ellen, he revealed that he was going back to his first love.

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Ellen DeGeneres asked Jamie if it was true that he and Eddie were planning on hitting the road together. The audience cheered at the possibility, but Jamie quickly shut that down, stating it wasn’t so. However, he would be thrilled at the possibility of taking to the stage with the celebrated comedy icon. 

“I would go on tour with Eddie! I want Eddie…” Jamie said before he began stumbling over his words. He then did the signature Eddie Murphy laugh. “I would love to go on tour with Eddie because I think, it’s our time. You haven’t heard from him in a minute and you haven’t heard from me. And I got it. I got some super-duper jokes and I’ve been working on my impersonations.” He then gave a sneak peek at his Jay Z and The Rock impressions.

Jamie said that his tour is already set up and it will begin at the small clubs he performed at when he was launching his career. “I want it to be intimate,” the Just Mercy actor said. “There’s some storytelling. There’s some stories of the first time I met Kanye [West]. I got stories being on Django [Unchained], things like that. So, I wanna take you on a little bit of an adventure.” Check out his interview below. 

Eddie Murphy is back and fans can rejoice. The beloved comedian made his return with last year’s Dolemite Is My Name and while the 58-year-old attended a number of interviews in light of his applauded performance, he made it clear that he’s working on his standup return since inking a deal with Netflix for a special. “I’m gonna start kinda working [it] out in the beginning of the year and then when it’s ready, you know, I’ll try to give myself eight or nine months to get it ready,” Eddie previously told Ellen DeGeneres. 

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Sources tell Page Six that Eddie’s words on how he’s going to test out his chops on small audiences and venues are very much true since the actor has apparently been sneaking into comedy clubs in New York to gauge the audience’s reactions to his jokes. We can’t confirm which clubs exactly Eddie has hit up and what kind of content he’s playing with but he recently called his past homophobic jokes “cringey.”

“Some of it. Some of it, I cringe when I watch. I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe I said that!” he said when reflecting back on his 1983 Delirious days.

2019 marked a huge comeback for Eddie Murphy. Dolemite Is My Name was his first lead role since 2011’s Tower Heist and the former definitely allowed his comedic and dramatic acting range to shine more than the latter. His depiction of Rudy Ray Moore got him nominated for “Best Performance By An Actor In A Motion Picture (Musical Or Comedy)” at the 2020 Golden Globes and Dolemite is up for “Best Picture”. That film is only the first piece to come out of Murphy’s multi-million dollar deal with Netflix, with a stand-up comedy special and a fourth installment of Beverly Hills Cop rumored to follow. To cap off his 2019 spree, he returned to the Saturday Night Live stage for the first time in 35 years to host its Christmas episode.

With all this going on for Murphy, it’s the perfect time for him to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. The 25th annual Critics’ Choice Awards will bestow him with that honor on Sunday, January 12. The ceremony will be hosted by actor Taye Diggs, airing from The Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. 

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Watch Murphy revive some of his classic Saturday Night Live characters during his recent appearance and read about the joke in his opening monologue that caught him some backlash from Bill Cosby’s publicist.