Being Eddie

From stand-up prodigy and Saturday Night Live phenom to beloved Hollywood icon, Being Eddie chronicles the extraordinary life and legacy of the genre-defying star through exclusive interviews with Murphy himself and his comedy peers, offering an intimate portrait of this once-in-a-generation talent.

It goes without saying that there’s only one Eddie Murphy. No other teen comedian shared a stage with Jerry Seinfeld at 17 and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live right out of high school. No actor has ever played a cop, a doctor, and a donkey — and dominated every facet of Hollywood he’s touched.

Fewer still have been an A-list celebrity for over four decades, and never succumbed to its darker side. Murphy’s unusual combination of explosive charisma, focused ambition, raw talent, and deep-set circumspection put him in a league of his own, and is on full display in Being Eddie, directed by two-time Oscar winner Angus Wall. The documentary gathers comedy and Hollywood legends like Dave Chappelle, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jamie Foxx, Jerry Seinfeld, Reginald Hudlin and more to celebrate the Oscar-nominated actor and his nearly 50-year career that’s seen him break barriers, invent genres, and inspire generations of talent. For the first time ever, Murphy invites the public into his home to

revisit his breathtaking body of work, all the while revealing the dazzling interior life that has long driven

— and grounded — this once-in-a-century star.

A STATEMENT FROM DIRECTOR ANGUS WALL

There is no one else like Eddie Murphy.

Nobody. He’s been famous longer than just about anyone alive, and he’s never lost who he is. He has survived it all with grace. How did he do that? What guides him? We chase all of these questions with him. There’s a great clip of Eddie on a talk show early on in his career, talking about how he’s always been

able to do impersonations and different voices. He talks about how his mom used to ask him, “Who’s Eddie? What voice is Eddie’s voice?” This movie answers that question. Eddie has played a lot of different characters over the last 40-plus years, but he has never played himself onscreen before. He is,

of course, very funny. But even more affecting than that is the unique viewpoint on life that he shares in the film. He opens up his world and his heart, and I think people are going to really enjoy spending time with him.

Q&A WITH EDDIE MURPHY

Q. Why was this right time to take a look back and do this documentary?

Murphy: Originally, because I was thinking about doing stand-up comedy again, and the documentary was going to show me putting my act together. I was going to do Saturday Night Live and Dolemite and do stand-up. We got all the ducks in a row, and then the pandemic hit and everything got

shut down for two years. Afterwards I was like, “I don’t know if I want to do stand-up.” It turned into this documentary. This whole thing took six years, and it timed out perfectly, because next year is my 50th year in show business.

Q. What surprised you most in the process of making this documentary?

Murphy: When I look at all this stuff in the movie, the thing that I realized was how young I was. I was really, really young. I’d get on that Saturday Night Live — and I’m a teenager. It’s a bunch of career-defining stuff that happened really early on, when I was just a baby. I was like, “Wow, what a trip.”

Q. What’s the one thing you want people to understand better about you after watching Being Eddie?

Murphy: I came along before Oprah — Michael Jordan wasn’t even Michael Jordan yet. There was no hip-hop yet. There might [have been] 20 Black comedians in the whole country. It’s just a whole different business now, it’s a whole different landscape. Through the documentary, people get a better understanding of how I got here. A young person might think I just walked out of heaven into Hollywood, but that’s not quite how it happened. The only time the audience usually sees me is if I’m promoting a movie, so they’re not really ever seeing me. They’re seeing my comic persona — doing my shtick. But in the documentary, this is me. This is my house, this is my family, and this is how I did it. For the first time, they’re getting a little peek at me.