Eddie Murphy reflects on David Spade’s “falling star” joke

Last Updated on July 2, 2024

Look, children, it’s a falling star! And he’s pretty pissed off, too! By the time 1995 rolled around, Eddie Murphy had undoubtedly taken a tumble: Another 48 Hrs. captured none of the magic of the original, Boomerang flew back in his face, Beverly Hills Cop III killed the franchise, and Vampire in Brooklyn sucked the life out of the box office. This was all David Spade needed for one infamous joke he did on Saturday Night Live, targeting Murphy on his “Hollywood Minute” segment.

While Eddie Murphy and David Spade have patched things up, the former – who was an SNL cast member from 1980-1984 (three years before Spade was a skater dude in Police Academy 4) – thought his alumni status should have meant more. As he told The New York Times, “He showed a picture of me, and he said, ‘Hey, everybody, catch a falling star.’ It was like: Wait, hold on. 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. 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. Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers.”

Murphy added that Spade’s dig – one of many one-liners he would deliver on his celebrity-skewering segment – went too far. “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.” On this final matter, Murphy aligned Spade’s “Hollywood Minute” bit with many in the press around that time, saying they promoted racism towards him in their publications.

Murphy actually confronted Spade on the phone the week after the incident, but the feud lasted for decades. As a result of Spade’s joke, Murphy avoided Saturday Night Live even longer than he already had, only returning to Studio 8H in 2019 for a hosting stint.

Was David Spade’s Eddie Murphy joke warranted or did he take it too far? Do you think Murphy overreacted? Give us your take below!