Why Sidney Poitier Instructed Eddie Murphy to Flip Down One Film Position

Eddie Murphy made his mark on Hollywood by being not simply humorous however by being downright hilarious — as one of many first Black common performers on Saturday Evening Stay and in ’80s box-office hits like 48 Hours, Buying and selling Locations and Beverly Hills Cop.

Though he scored his lone Oscar nomination — in the most effective supporting actor class — for a dramatic function within the 2006 film musical Dreamgirls, he is principally caught to comedy. As Murphy, 63, reveals within the new two-episode Apple TV+ documentary Quantity One on the Name Sheet, he was suggested by none aside from Oscar-winning Hollywood legend Sidney Poitier to do exactly that (and let Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman deal with the dramatic heavy lifting).

“Early on, Sidney stated — I don’t know if it was an insult or a praise, or one thing,” he begins. “It was like… They have been speaking about doing Malcolm X. Norman Jewison was placing it collectively, and so they have been gonna use The Autobiography of Malcolm X by [Roots author] Alex Haley. And so they approached me about enjoying Alex Haley.”

Murphy continues: “And a few-kind-of-where round that very same time, I ran into Sidney Poitier at one thing. And I requested him, ‘Yeah, I’m desirous about enjoying Alex Haley.’ And Sidney Poitier stated [imitating Poitier’s Bahamian accent], uh, ‘You aren’t Denzel, and you aren’t Morgan. You’re a breath of recent air. And don’t f— with that.’ And I used to be like, ‘What?’ ”

Haley had beforehand been performed by James Earl Jones within the groundbreaking 1977 TV miniseries Roots and its 1979 sequel Roots: The Subsequent Generations, so Murphy would have been in extremely esteemed firm. However apparently, he took Poitier’s recommendation and declined the function.

Within the documentary, Murphy additionally remembers ideas he acquired from Marlon Brando, former heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes (“Do not forget the place you got here from”) and Godfather of Soul James Brown. (Murphy parodied Brown on SNL, and his Dreamgirls character, James Early, was stated to have been loosely primarily based on Brown.)

“And James Brown informed me, he requested me, he informed me I ought to cease cursing. He stated [imitating Brown’s raspy voice], ‘You need to be on this enterprise for a very long time, it is best to cease that cursing.’ And he stated, ‘You suppose you bought 1,000,000 {dollars}?’ I stated, ‘Yeah, I do.’ And he stated, ‘You ain’t bought no million {dollars}.’ He stated, ‘In the event you do bought a tens of millions {dollars}, you are taking it and bury it within the woods.’ ”

“And I stated, ‘Why bury my cash within the woods?’ ” Murphy continues. “He stated, ‘The federal government will take it from you. So bury it.’ And I stated, ‘However cannot the federal government take your land?’ And he stated, ‘However they will not know the place the cash is.’ That is a real story. That is the type of recommendation I used to get.”

Murphy goes on to say that the “elders” had hassle giving him helpful recommendation as a result of Hollywood hadn’t beforehand seen a younger, profitable Black man barely out of his teenagers. “I used to be in uncharted waters,” he says. “For Sidney and all these guys, once I confirmed up, it was one thing type of new. They did not have a reference for me.”

Together with Murphy, different stars interviewed for the documentary — which devotes one episode to “Black Main Males in Hollywood” and one to “Black Main Girls in Hollywood” — embrace Washington, Freeman, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg.

Quantity One on the Name Sheet premieres March 28 on Apple TV+.