Eddie Murphy is open to doing stand-up again.
Speaking with “Extra’s” Derek Hough about his new Netflix documentary Being Eddie, it originally began as a film about stand-up.
Murphy said: “It happened organically… I was going to do standup again… And it was like, ‘Okay, let’s document it. Let’s do a documentary and show the whole process of getting the act together.’ And so we started doing that, and then the pandemic hit.”
“After the pandemic was over, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not going out there and telling no jokes,” Murphy continued. “You can catch COVID… but we had all of this footage… and it was like let’s just keep it going .”
Murphy’s doc commemorates his 50th year in the entertainment industry.
“It worked out perfect because this is about to be my 50th year in show business… I started out July 9th, 1976,” Murphy said.
Murphy then spoke about being vulnerable in the documentary.
“The only thing that might have been traumatic for me over is losing my brother [Charlie Murphy]. Stuff with my career, I was never traumatized by anything in my career…,” Murphy explained. “I was always on to the next project.”
Murphy shared his feelings about his impact on the comedians featured in the doc.
“It’s just a great feeling,” he said. “To know that you had some impact on the people that came after you, that they look at you a certain way… that’s always a good feeling.”
He also explained why he doesn’t give other comedians advice.
“I was never one for giving advice… no two people, none of the eight billion people on the planet, no two people are having the same experience. So, I kind of never got into advice, never got into taking advice from anybody.”
Murphy said he would return to the stand-up stage under one condition.
“I’m open to it again,” he said. “And if it ever struck me that I could have some fun doing it, I’d get up there and do it again… But it has to be fun for me… If I’m having fun, it’s going to work and it’s going to be funny.”
Being Eddie drops on November 12.