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Honestly, working with Eddie Murphy was mind-blowing just in terms of the budget alone. To see the respect he commands, to witness his presence, you understand why he and people like Martin Lawrence are stars.
Blake & Murphy didn't seem to appreciate who I was and what I was doing for them. After losing the NXT Tag Team Championship, they went on a long losing streak. They needed me yet just used me as an accessory.
Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando.
Mr. Murphy is really, really amazing. I have admired him from the time that I saw the first season of 'American Horror Story.' I watched 'Glee,' but once I saw 'American Horror Story,' I was like: 'I'm working for him.'
With 'Horror Story', it really was, 'You're going to run; you're going to jump off this cliff, and trust that that Ryan Murphy is going to catch you.' So I just ran head-on into it and jumped off the edge of that cliff.
Richard Pryor - he had stories, he had characters, he had short jokes, and he had bits. He had all those things. Eddie Murphy has all those things, and he can sing. A comedian is a bunch of stuff; it's not just one area.
I'm really kind of a little bit romantic for the lost era. There's a lot of us that are - kind like James Murphy, same thing - we feel like it's this magic era that happened before us. And it wasn't even necessarily disco.
When someone can, on a worldwide level, make someone laugh, that's power. A lot my heroes - Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, the Wayans, Adam Sandler - they get it. And I've always felt that Andy Samberg is the future of comedy.
When you're making a movie, you have those days that you really look forward to, and it's a little bit like Murphy's law. The days you look forward to become your hell days. The days you're dreading become these amazing days.
I thought, because of 'The 100' and 'Apocalypse,' that I knew everything about what life after an apocalypse would be - but Ryan Murphy and the writers of 'American Horror Story' have shown a whole other side of an apocalypse.
When political correctness first started coming around, it ruined Andrew Dice Clay and Eddie Murphy's stand-up career. Sam Kinison died at just the right time, 'cause no one was going to tolerate what he was saying anymore either.
What makes me laugh is hearing the stuff about my son or the stuff about my mom. I was a big fan of Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy; they talked a lot about their moms and their kids. Those are the things that inspired me to do stand-up.
There are actors who do various different shades of a similar character, which is fine. But I prefer the Cillian Murphy school of doing something that takes you so far outside yourself that it's an incredible challenge and adventure.
Eddie Murphy was my guy for a long time. My first exposure to 'SNL' was his 'Best Of' VHS, and I would watch it over and over again. He was one of the few people on the show to play with the live elements and engage with the audience.
For us, a lot of the cartoon and crazy stuff on 'F Is for Family' is tertiary characters; it happens on the television in the show. We try to keep whatever problem the Murphy family is dealing with rooted as much as we can in reality.
When we built Amblin, we even put Murphy beds in there because we thought that was so practical. Why would anybody, if you were working on something, need to go home at night? You'd just stay there, wake up in the morning, and carry on.
I want to beat up Michael Fassbender in a movie. I was with him at the beginning of his career when he did an episode of 'Murphy's Law.' He's a proper superstar and enormously talented, but I want to do a scene where I properly duff him up.
If I can make you laugh and learn, I want to be like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. I want to be of that ilk, I don't want to just make you laugh, I want to make you think.
An ideal movie would be, like - to get this to happen, I have to work so much harder - but imagine Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy... Who else? Donald Faison. Directed by Steven Spielberg. That would be awesome.
You look at who's actually created shows for FX that have succeeded, and there are a lot of first-time showrunners - Ryan Murphy, Denis Leary, Louis C.K., the 'It's Always Sunny' creators, Kurt Sutter, Joe Weisberg, Pamela Adlon, Donald Glover.
I received a phone call; my agent got a phone call from Ryan Murphy saying he wanted to talk to me... And he basically outlined 'American Horror Story' for me and said that there's a character named Larry the Burn Guy, and I'd like you to play it.
I just always wanted to be a baseball announcer. I'm a huge Mets fan, and I wanted to be the next Bob Murphy. As far as careers go, that was the first career that I really thought about. Well, before that, I wanted to be a Mello Yello truck driver.
Frankly, to be honest, I hadn't worked for two years before 'Murphy Brown.' It's a nice illusion now to think of all of us as terribly successful and talented people at the top of our profession, but that's hindsight. I had to pray for a job like this.
'Boomerang!' I love that movie just because of Halle Berry, Robin Givens, Eddie Murphy, Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt. There were so many characters. As an actress, to see African-American actors be so diverse was different from what I was used to seeing.
Blake & Murphy and I used to be best friends. They helped me discover who I am. They taught me that Bliss was good, but bad is better. Because of the boys, I was able to really express who I am instead of being the pixie princess I was pretending to be.
I used to have the 'Best Of Eddie Murphy' VHS tape that I wore out completely, watching it over and over again. His 'Buckwheat Sings' is, to this day, one of my all-time favorite sketches on the show. I also loved the one where he plays the Tooth Fairy.
Eddie Murphy said once in an interview that nothing is offensive if it's funny. I sort of agree with that, but if something's funny and you're the subject of it, sometimes it's more offensive. If someone's insulting you, you want them to sound like an idiot.
Girls was the first television show I got to be a part of, and that was here in New York. Getting to work with Lena Dunham, and to work with HBO and Judd Apatow, and then being a big fan of Ryan Murphy, I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity than this.
When I first joined with Murphy, I had to make a character change. I wasn't confident in myself about that at all, but I remember my mom telling me that once something clicks with me... I had to... come in and kick the door down and let everyone know who I am.
I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I'm no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I'm fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character.
I love storytellers. When I was growing up, my inspirations were watching Eddie Murphy, Dennis Wolfberg, and Louie Anderson. These guys were great at telling stories, and I made that my own style, talking about things that happened to me and trying to make them funny.
Laverne Cox, Isis King, Janet Mock, Our Lady J, Ryan Murphy, Steven Canals, the people I've met growing up, and even me - all have inspired me to see that it is possible to get far anywhere and that the capacity for positive and motivating influence is truly unlimited.
My friend gave me a VHS tape of Eddie Murphy's 'Raw.' I watched it so many times, I fell in love with it. I would watch it every day, just picking it apart. And then I started doing open mics around Maryland and D.C.: that's where I'm from. And I haven't stopped since.
I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.
I think Netflix is incredible! I travel a lot, so it keeps me company sometimes. I like 'Peaky Blinders.' I'm a big fan of Cillian Murphy, and he is quite the actor. I watch documentaries, mainly, but I've really gotten into watching scary movies. 'It Follows' is wicked.
If I look at my family tree and follow every generation before us, going all the way back to the slaves, then Eddie Murphy is the highest achievement as far as my bloodline is concerned. How could you be jealous? You can only be proud, unless you got some serious issues.
Ever since it was announced that Ryan Murphy intended to produce 'The People v. O.J. Simpson,' I have been inundated with the question as to 'How do I feel about it?' All I can say is, for me, it was personally the most heartbreaking tragedy that altered my life forever.
I used to watch 'Coming to America' every day after school. I have full-on long-running inside jokes with friends and family about different scenes in that movie alone. Also, my brother and I loved 'The Golden Child,' so, yeah: I was a huge fan of Eddie Murphy growing up.
I think Eddie Murphy is the greatest comedian. I do think that Richard Pryor is the Godfather, but Eddie Murphy, in my opinion, has every comedic category in his arsenal. He can roast you. He can freestyle. He can host. He was LeBron James before we even saw LeBron James.
I cried most days working on the first draft. The last scenes were the hardest. I had a feeling where I wanted to end - the exact note - but I couldn't see how to get there. Sarah Murphy, my editor, asked the right questions to help me. I think of 'The Bear' as a hopeful book.
When I started comedy, I was a big Eddie Murphy fan. I thought if you did stand-up, you were supposed to know how to act, write, and host. I thought it was all one thing. That's why it doesn't feel like I'm transitioning to acting: because in my stand-up, I do characters all the time.
To me, there were comedies that should go up for Oscars. I think Eddie Murphy in 'The Nutty Professor' was one of the greatest acting performances of all time, but it'd never be recognized that way. They always go for De Niro and Pacino, but Eddie Murphy played seven different people!
I was influenced by a lot of stand-up comedians... Eddie Murphy back when he was doing 'Raw.' I watched that so many times as a kid, I can probably still quote the entire thing to this day. Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. George Carlin. A lot of the guys who were sort of edgy for their time.
Ice Cube went straight outta Compton to hearing, 'Are we there yet?' Eddie Murphy blew up striding across the stage in a red leather ensemble that would have made Elvis Presley chuckle, yet is probably best known to anyone born in the 21st century as the overly chatty donkey from 'Shrek.'
It would be impossible for me to say when the idea of becoming an owner first came to me. Probably it was a gradual process. The first time the matter was brought to my attention in a concrete form, however, was when Charles Murphy was selling out his controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs.
I love Cillian Murphy's character in 'Peaky Blinders' and Tom Hardy's in 'Taboo' - theses are characters that, as audience members, we follow along with and root for. But our own morality is tested throughout that journey, because these characters ride a thin line between morality and amorality.
Eddie Murphy did '48 Hrs.' because that was the only movie offered to him. And he killed it. Bill Cosby did 'I Spy' because that was the TV show he was offered. But now, there are networks dedicated to comedy, and the Internet... it's so easy for comedians to not do things that aren't true to them.
But you really - I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal. You know he comes out of stand-up. He comes - it's all about capturing the moment - in the moment, you know.
A man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film.
It's nice to have a few names. I use a few names myself. I use a few different surnames. I call myself James sometimes. I actually use my mother's name as a professional name. But if someone calls me Mr. Murphy or Mr. Gillen, I don't like that. I don't like being called 'mister,' and I don't like being called 'sir.'