WATCH: Eddie Murphy On How ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Changed The Film Industry
The iconic actor and comedian spoke with ESSENCE ahead of the release of ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,’ premiering on Netflix July 3.
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00:00It all starts with Beverly Hills Cop.
00:03It altered the perception.
00:05You know, hey, you can have a movie with a brother
00:08that the whole world would go see.
00:10It's like, yeah, that starts with that movie.
00:12And I'm aware of it.
00:14I be keeping score.
00:16You say, okay, all right.
00:19Okay, I started that shit right there.
00:22Oh, yeah, they're doing that.
00:24Oh, yeah, that's nice. I started that shit too.
00:26Y'all safe? Everybody safe?
00:28There's no seatbelt in the middle.
00:30What the hell with the seatbelt?
00:31We on the edge.
00:38So for my first question, man,
00:40the previous Beverly Hills Cop film
00:42was released 30 years ago in May of 94.
00:46With you returning to your role of Axel Ford,
00:48was that something that you knew you wanted to do
00:51after that last film,
00:52or did it kind of manifest in recent years?
00:54It's actually, it has just been in the background
00:58simmering for years and years.
01:00We were trying to develop Beverly Hills Cop
01:03since the last one ended, since 1994.
01:06But nothing ever came together.
01:08We had different scripts and different producers
01:11that came in, and somebody would be working on it,
01:13and it just never, ever, was never, ever right.
01:16Because after the third one, I was like,
01:19hey, this third one is not on the level of the first two.
01:23This third one is kind of soft.
01:25So I was like, I'm not doing another one
01:27unless this shit is right.
01:29And it just wasn't right.
01:31Nothing was right.
01:32And it took 30 years to get it right.
01:34So the first film ushered in the action comedy genre.
01:39It started it. It started it.
01:41It started it.
01:42Yeah.
01:43It started the action comedy genre,
01:45and it's also the first movie in the history of movies
01:51that starred a black man that was successful
01:56all around the world.
01:59All around the world.
02:00It's the first movie like that in history.
02:02So can you talk to me about your feelings about that
02:05and how that's like such a formula for success now
02:09in the film industry.
02:10Can you talk to me about, how do you feel about
02:12the impact that the film and the franchise itself
02:15has had on the film industry?
02:17I love it. I love it.
02:18I love it.
02:19And I'm aware of the impact, and I love it.
02:22Even if a lot of people, most people don't know
02:25that Beverly Hills Cop is where that started.
02:28And most people don't know that, you know,
02:30most movies with black folks,
02:32they only see them in the States, you know.
02:34They just assume, oh yeah, movies come out everywhere.
02:37But usually we do, our movies are just in the States usually.
02:41And Beverly Hills Cop is the first one, like I said,
02:44it's all around the world.
02:45And that opens up, you know, the world to Will Smith
02:50and to The Rock, these other people
02:52that are all around the world.
02:53It all starts with Beverly Hills Cop.
02:56It altered the perception.
02:58You know, hey, you can have a movie with a brother
03:01that the whole world will go see?
03:03It's like, yeah, that starts with that movie.
03:05And I'm aware of it. I be keeping score.
03:09You say, okay, all right, okay, I started that shit right there.
03:15Oh, get it doing that, oh yeah, that's nice.
03:17I started that shit too.
03:23So kind of adding on that,
03:24you've been in a lot of films over your career.
03:27I believe there's over 40 feature films in your career,
03:29which is phenomenal.
03:31So you're an expert at the craft at this point.
03:34I wanted to ask, like, when you reprise a role,
03:37specifically this role that you're into now with Axl Foley,
03:41did you treat each film like a new endeavor,
03:44or did you kind of take something from the previous film
03:47and then kind of add to it?
03:48Like, how did you prepare for Axl Foley in this new film?
03:51What we did preparing for this movie was we said,
03:55hey, the last movie didn't have all the elements
03:59that are supposed to be in a Beverly Hills Cop movie.
04:02So if we do another one, we have to have all the elements
04:06that are in a Beverly Hills Cop movie for the movie to work.
04:10And this movie checked all those boxes.
04:14I said I read all these scripts that didn't have all the elements.
04:18The first Beverly Hills Cop, Axl goes to Beverly Hills
04:22because somebody close to him gets killed.
04:24That's why he's there.
04:25And the second one, he goes there
04:27because his boss gets killed.
04:28That's why he's there.
04:29And the third Beverly Hills Cop,
04:31he's there because Uncle Dave is in trouble,
04:33like this Disney character.
04:35It's like Uncle Dave is in trouble,
04:37and they're doing counterfeiting.
04:38So you don't bite your teeth into it like that.
04:41Axl doesn't have any skin in the game.
04:43And this, when we added, Axl's got a daughter.
04:47He's estranged from his daughter, and she's in trouble.
04:50And that's why he's in Beverly Hills.
04:52Once we added that element to it,
04:54that's when we knew we had a movie.
04:56So we looked at all the stuff that was missing in the last one,
04:59and we was like, we've got to make sure we have all the right ingredients.
05:02And we've got to have all the cast, you know,
05:05all the cast is important.
05:07We didn't have a second movie, a third movie,
05:09Taggart, John Ashton's not in the movie.
05:12You've got to have Taggart and Rosewood and Serge.
05:16You've got to have all the, and Paul Rice's character.
05:18You've got to have all of that stuff to make it, you know,
05:21have all the ingredients that was in the first one.
05:24Well, thank you so much, Eddie.
05:26I really appreciate your time, and thank you again.
05:28Yeah, man.