Eddie Murphy Slams David Spade for Making 'Racist' Joke About Him on 'Saturday Night Live' in the '90s: 'It Hurt My Feelings'
Eddie Murphy is calling out David Spade.
The Daddy Daycare actor, 63, got candid in a recent interview about a joke that was made at his expense by the Tommy Boy star, 59, on his former show Saturday Night Live in the 1990s that rubbed him the wrong way.
"It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re f------ with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that," Murphy explained.
The Shrek star noted how disrespectful it was as he built the sketch comedy series into what it is today. "This is Saturday Night Live. I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show. 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? And I know that he can’t just say that," he noted.
"A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career," Murphy continued about the slight.
"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," the A-lister added.
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After Spade's dig, Murphy did not return to host the NBC show for nearly 30 years. "In the long run, it’s all good," he said. "Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL. I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.”
The Joe Dirt alum reacted to Murphy's displeasure with his sarcastic remark about his career in his 2015 memoir Almost Interesting. "I've come to see Eddie’s point on this one,” Spade, who left the series in 1996, wrote about the situation. “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 shit staaaangs. And it can add up quickly.”
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The New York Times conducted the interview with Murphy.