Coming 2 America: Eddie Murphy wanted Tracy Morgan to play his son

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It's been more than thirty years since we last caught up with Akeem (Eddie Murphy), Semmi (Arsenio Hall), Lisa (Shari Headley), King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), and the rest of Zamunda in Coming to America, but the much-anticipated sequel will finally debut on Amazon Prime Video next week. Coming 2 America will find Akeem, now the newly-crowned King of Zamunda, and his trusted confidante Semmi, embarking on an all-new adventure that finds them heading back to the borough of Queens, New York where it all began when Akeem discovers a son he never knew about.

Akeem's son Lavelle is played by Jermaine Fowler in Coming 2 America, but while speaking with CinemaBlend, Eddie Murphy revealed that he had once envisioned a very different actor playing the role — Tracy Morgan.

Tracy Morgan was gonna be my son. Three years into writing it, Tracy was the son, still. What changed was, we met with Tracy a couple times and was like 'Tracy look the same age as me. How are we going to make this believable.

As Tracy Morgan is only a few years younger than Eddie Murphy, the match wouldn't exactly have been realistic casting — not to mention that he's only a year younger than Leslie Jones, who is playing Lavelle's mother — but Murphy really wanted to include Morgan, so he decided to give him the role of Lavelle's uncle, Reem. Coming 2 America will debut on Amazon Prime Video on March 5, 2021.