WATCH: Eddie Murphy On How ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Changed The Film Industry

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The iconic actor and comedian spoke with ESSENCE ahead of the release of ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,’ premiering on Netflix July 3.

Transcript

00:00It all starts with Beverly Hills Cop.

00:03It altered the perception.

00:05You know, hey, you can have a movie with a brother

00:08that the whole world would go see.

00:10It's like, yeah, that starts with that movie.

00:12And I'm aware of it.

00:14I be keeping score.

00:16You say, okay, all right.

00:19Okay, I started that shit right there.

00:22Oh, yeah, they're doing that.

00:24Oh, yeah, that's nice. I started that shit too.

00:26Y'all safe? Everybody safe?

00:28There's no seatbelt in the middle.

00:30What the hell with the seatbelt?

00:31We on the edge.

00:38So for my first question, man,

00:40the previous Beverly Hills Cop film

00:42was released 30 years ago in May of 94.

00:46With you returning to your role of Axel Ford,

00:48was that something that you knew you wanted to do

00:51after that last film,

00:52or did it kind of manifest in recent years?

00:54It's actually, it has just been in the background

00:58simmering for years and years.

01:00We were trying to develop Beverly Hills Cop

01:03since the last one ended, since 1994.

01:06But nothing ever came together.

01:08We had different scripts and different producers

01:11that came in, and somebody would be working on it,

01:13and it just never, ever, was never, ever right.

01:16Because after the third one, I was like,

01:19hey, this third one is not on the level of the first two.

01:23This third one is kind of soft.

01:25So I was like, I'm not doing another one

01:27unless this shit is right.

01:29And it just wasn't right.

01:31Nothing was right.

01:32And it took 30 years to get it right.

01:34So the first film ushered in the action comedy genre.

01:39It started it. It started it.

01:41It started it.

01:42Yeah.

01:43It started the action comedy genre,

01:45and it's also the first movie in the history of movies

01:51that starred a black man that was successful

01:56all around the world.

01:59All around the world.

02:00It's the first movie like that in history.

02:02So can you talk to me about your feelings about that

02:05and how that's like such a formula for success now

02:09in the film industry.

02:10Can you talk to me about, how do you feel about

02:12the impact that the film and the franchise itself

02:15has had on the film industry?

02:17I love it. I love it.

02:18I love it.

02:19And I'm aware of the impact, and I love it.

02:22Even if a lot of people, most people don't know

02:25that Beverly Hills Cop is where that started.

02:28And most people don't know that, you know,

02:30most movies with black folks,

02:32they only see them in the States, you know.

02:34They just assume, oh yeah, movies come out everywhere.

02:37But usually we do, our movies are just in the States usually.

02:41And Beverly Hills Cop is the first one, like I said,

02:44it's all around the world.

02:45And that opens up, you know, the world to Will Smith

02:50and to The Rock, these other people

02:52that are all around the world.

02:53It all starts with Beverly Hills Cop.

02:56It altered the perception.

02:58You know, hey, you can have a movie with a brother

03:01that the whole world will go see?

03:03It's like, yeah, that starts with that movie.

03:05And I'm aware of it. I be keeping score.

03:09You say, okay, all right, okay, I started that shit right there.

03:15Oh, get it doing that, oh yeah, that's nice.

03:17I started that shit too.

03:23So kind of adding on that,

03:24you've been in a lot of films over your career.

03:27I believe there's over 40 feature films in your career,

03:29which is phenomenal.

03:31So you're an expert at the craft at this point.

03:34I wanted to ask, like, when you reprise a role,

03:37specifically this role that you're into now with Axl Foley,

03:41did you treat each film like a new endeavor,

03:44or did you kind of take something from the previous film

03:47and then kind of add to it?

03:48Like, how did you prepare for Axl Foley in this new film?

03:51What we did preparing for this movie was we said,

03:55hey, the last movie didn't have all the elements

03:59that are supposed to be in a Beverly Hills Cop movie.

04:02So if we do another one, we have to have all the elements

04:06that are in a Beverly Hills Cop movie for the movie to work.

04:10And this movie checked all those boxes.

04:14I said I read all these scripts that didn't have all the elements.

04:18The first Beverly Hills Cop, Axl goes to Beverly Hills

04:22because somebody close to him gets killed.

04:24That's why he's there.

04:25And the second one, he goes there

04:27because his boss gets killed.

04:28That's why he's there.

04:29And the third Beverly Hills Cop,

04:31he's there because Uncle Dave is in trouble,

04:33like this Disney character.

04:35It's like Uncle Dave is in trouble,

04:37and they're doing counterfeiting.

04:38So you don't bite your teeth into it like that.

04:41Axl doesn't have any skin in the game.

04:43And this, when we added, Axl's got a daughter.

04:47He's estranged from his daughter, and she's in trouble.

04:50And that's why he's in Beverly Hills.

04:52Once we added that element to it,

04:54that's when we knew we had a movie.

04:56So we looked at all the stuff that was missing in the last one,

04:59and we was like, we've got to make sure we have all the right ingredients.

05:02And we've got to have all the cast, you know,

05:05all the cast is important.

05:07We didn't have a second movie, a third movie,

05:09Taggart, John Ashton's not in the movie.

05:12You've got to have Taggart and Rosewood and Serge.

05:16You've got to have all the, and Paul Rice's character.

05:18You've got to have all of that stuff to make it, you know,

05:21have all the ingredients that was in the first one.

05:24Well, thank you so much, Eddie.

05:26I really appreciate your time, and thank you again.

05:28Yeah, man.

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