Being Eddie (2025)

If you came of age in the 1980s and 90s you were blessed with a front row seat to the meteoric rise of Eddie Murphy, superstar entertainer. We say entertainer and not actor or comedian, because unlike most in Hollywood, Murphy transcends any attempt to pigeonhole him into a single art form or genre of creative output. The new Netflix documentary Being Eddie (2025) is a long overdue look at the brilliance of this mega-watt legendary performer and artist, a Hollywood beacon who has not merely demonstrated the mastery of his crafts but repeatedly broken new ground and charted new territory for others to follow. But it is critical to note that those “others” were and are not just black people or black men, but people – period – who observe and appreciate talent, discipline, and fearlessness. Many of those “others,” mainly contemporaries or those younger than Murphy, lined up, not merely to sing his praises, but to explain the magic of Murphy in this compelling new film.

Directed by the two-time Oscar winner Angus Wall, Being Eddie is not a tell-all expose, but a thought-provoking, well-crafted journey through Murphy’s almost fifty-year career. As much as the film draws on the words of fellow comedians and actors to narrate and explain the phenom that is Eddie Murphy (like Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, Jamie Foxx, Arsenio Hall, Kevin Hart, Tracy Morgan, Chris Rock, and Jerry Seinfeld), it also reveals Murphy’s profound appreciation and reverence for his own heroes like Redd Foxx, Muhammad Ali, and Richard Pryor. It is a story of the rise and rise of an unmatched creative talent at a particular moment in 1980s and 90s popular culture and his pathway from stand-up prodigy in the New York comedy clubs to the youngest ever star of Saturday Night Live (Murphy was only nineteen when he was cast), through a slew of game-changing, genre-crossing performances in blockbusters, and finally to his place as a revered elder statesman of comedy.

Eddie Murphy relaxing in his SNL dressing room with (from left to right) Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Tracy Morgan (2019)

 

The film moves between intimate interview clips with Murphy in his sprawling California mansion and archival photos and film clips of Murphy’s performances. It is largely through the historical photos of Murphy as a child, surrounded by his brother, mother, father, and stepfather, that we get a sense of how his creativity was forged. But it is through film clips of his legendary SNL sketches (think Gumby, James Brown in the hot tub, white like me, Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood, and Buckwheat), path-breaking action roles (Beverly Hills Cop 1984, 1987, 1994, 2013, and 2024, 48 Hrs. 1982, and Another 48 Hrs. 1990), rom-coms (Boomerang 1992), dramas (Life 1999), musicals (Dreamgirls 2006), comedies (Trading Places 1983, Coming to America 1988, and The Nutty Professor 1996), children’s movies (Daddy Day Care 2003), animation (Shrek 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, and Mulan 1998), and TV shows (The PJs 1999-2001) that we are witness to Murphy, the consummate professional, mastering multiple, seemingly conflicting genres of film and TV performance. (Murphy also wrote and directed Harlem Nights 1989 in which he starred alongside his heroes Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor!) It is through the video clips and excerpts from interviews with the likes of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Barbara Walters that we see his navigation of stardom and his commendable ability to maintain composure and a sense of self throughout his head-spinning career.

We would be remiss if we didn’t’ point out that Murphy played an astonishing seven characters in The Nutty Professor (1996), many of whom took about four hours in the make-up chair to create. As Pete Davidson aptly points out, there is a reason that other comedians don’t even attempt such feats. They don’t have the patience or the stamina to pull it off!

But Murphy’s astonishing filmography, as cited above, does not even encompass what he is arguably most famous for, that is turning stand-up comedy into a stadium-filling concert event by giving us a sexy, leather-clad comedian who was as fearless as he was Raw (you see what we did there?). Murphy’s first blowout stand-up concert movie was of course Delirious, released in 1983. Before that, most male comedians were light years from being considered anything close to sexy! Sexy-Murphy also revealed himself in the 1992 box office hit Boomerang, in which he played the handsome, smooth, and duplicitous cosmetics executive Marcus who is eventually transformed by his love and loss of his colleague Angela (Halle Berry). By the way, with a production budget of $42 million, Boomerang grossed over $131 million worldwide and proved to white Hollywood execs that black people could be romantic leads with mass appeal breaking open the gates for other black male leads like Will Smith and Denzel Washington.

But Murphy’s talents also transcend his genre-defying command of TV and film. He is a talented musician who plays the piano and guitar and whose singing chops were on display in films like his Oscar-nominated turn as James Early in Dreamgirls (2006) and his funk-pop-R&B hit Party All the Time (1985) which reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Although his accolades are many, astonishingly Murphy has never won an Oscar, an “oversight” which he understands may be a punishment for his obvious (to black people) 1988 Oscar night declaration noting that black actors win Oscars about every twenty years (Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, and Louis Gossett Jr.) and that “black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear anymore.” (Newsflash, #OscarSoWhite is not new!)

But perhaps the most profound revelation of the film is the distance between Murphy the man and Murphy the star. In his one-on-one interviews, Murphy is pensive, intelligent, deeply introspective, quiet, almost shy. He is thoughtful about his profound success and aware of what it means to have survived Hollywood. Perceptively, Murphy does not only see his peers as other comedians. He is all too aware that he is in the same conversation with other stunningly talented people like Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Rick James, and Prince, black American music superstars who all died long before their times from excesses linked to drug abuse. Murphy’s awareness of the extent to which fame accompanies death and despair is also felt in his deceptively simple revelation that he has buried too many people (meaning literally paying for burials and tombstones) like Redd Foxx, Rick James, and William “Billie” Thomas Jr. (the actor who played Buckwheat). So, it is no laughing matter when Murphy speaks candidly about his grounding forces: self-love and prayer. In his own words, Murphy earnestly explains, “the best thing to pray for is peace of mind.” Indeed, he speaks candidly about never indulging in hard drugs, not drinking alcohol, and the importance of being spiritually centred.

Profoundly, the film also reveals Murphy the private man as a dedicated father of ten, who views his children, not his work, as his true legacy. Eddie Murphy is a man who has cracked the code on how to survive Hollywood. He is a man who was invited to and attended “the party,” but did not party! The film ends with Murphy’s December 2019 return to SNL as host after a mean-spirited 1995 sketch by David Spade caused a major rift between Murphy and the show’s Canadian creator Lorne Michaels. In the words of Chris Rock, who Murphy generously welcomed to his monologue stage alongside, Chappelle, Morgan, and Kennan Thompson, “It was one of the greatest SNL’s ever and I walked over to Lorne Michaels and said, you should quit right now.”

Interestingly, due to the sheer number of fellow comedians who speak of Murphy’s storied career throughout the film, the lingering question at the end of the film is if Murphy will ever do stand-up comedy again on a level of his transformative work in Delirious and Raw. Murphy’s answer? He’s not sure…perhaps, if he has something to say.