Eddie Murphy Revisits David Spade’s 1995 ‘SNL’ Joke About His Career: ‘I Felt It Was Racist’

In 1995 David Spade made a joke about Eddie Murphy as part of his “Hollywood Minute” sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” The joke followed the release of Murphy’s “Vampire in Brooklyn”—Spade said, “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish” and held up a photo of Murphy at the same time. The pair’s relationship was never the same, and in an interview with the New York Times published Sunday, Murphy said, “I felt it was racist.”

The actor and comedian explained, “When David Spade said that shit about my career on ‘SNL,’ it was like. ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re fucking with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings.” He also called himself the “biggest thing that ever came off that show” and added that the show “would have been off the air if I didn’t go back on the show, and now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career?”

One of the more insulting aspects of the joke, he continued, is that ‘SNL’ scripts go through an approval process that Murphy is more than familiar with. “And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career,” he added.

“Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal. It was like, ‘Yo, how could you do that?’ My career? Really? A joke about my career? So I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought—I felt it was racist.”

Spade wrote about the subsequent fallout in his memoir “Almost Interesting: The Memoir” in 2015. He expressed “relief” at having thought up the sketch in the first place because “I needed something to stick.” The first joke, he added, was a swipe at the singer Michael Bolton that earned “laughs all around” and the sketch stuck.

He landed on Murphy after the box office failure of both “Vampire in Brooklyn” and “Harlem Nights.” Spade wrote, “The burn skims by on air, gets sort of a laugh mixed with an, ‘Ooo no you di‑int’ response, and I think nothing of it. Especially because it’s buried in the middle of ten or twelve of these rapid-fire sizzles that come and go quickly.”

Murphy called him at his office the following Monday and reamed him. Spade recalled, Murphy said, “David Spade, who the fuck do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. F–k. Going after ME?? You dumb motherf–ker! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me.”

Things between two eventually calmed down by the memoir’s release, and Spade admitted, “I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one. Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that s–t staaaangs. And it can add up quickly.”