by Sky Obercam
Clutch Magazine

Eddie Murphy is Rolling Stone’s newest subject of interest, and when a relatively low-key celebrity such has he speaks, folks are bound to listen. The 50-year-old Hollywood vet has a full plate, with a new film, Tower Heist, about to open, plans to host the Oscar’s and much more. This excerpt of the Q&A starts with Murphy addressing rumors that he is a recluse:

“I leave my house all the time,” he says. “But I’m not at all the Hollywood parties. I’m grown, and where else am I supposed to be? I’m supposed to be home…If I were out in the clubs every night, they’d be saying, ‘That’s a shame, look at him, 50 years old, he’s still out at these clubs.’ Recluses are nasty, with long nails, don’t wash their a**…. I’m too vain to be a recluse. But homebody, absolutely. I’m 50 years old, beautiful house, I’m supposed to be home, chilling.”

Fans of Eddie Murphy’s pre-family film days may be pleased to know that he’s not really feeling that genre at the present time:

“I don’t have any interest in that right now. There’s really no blueprint, but I’m trying to do some edgy stuff. And I only want to do what I really want to do, otherwise I’m content to sit here and play my guitar all day. I always tell people now that I’m a semiretired gentleman of leisure, and occasionally I’ll go do some work to break the boredom up.”

“I’m the first black actor to take charge in a white world onscreen. That’s why I became as popular as I became.”

Moving on, the comedic icon says it’s a no-go for Beverly Hills Cop IV, but…:

“What I’m trying to do now is produce a TV show starring Axel Foley’s son, and Axel is the chief of police now in Detroit. I’d do the pilot, show up here and there. None of the movie scripts were right; it was trying to force the premise. If you have to force something, you shouldn’t be doing it. It was always a rehash of the old thing. It was always wrong.”

As a matter of fact, Kevin Hart recently posted a message on Facebook claiming he may be this century’s Axel Foley. The comedian wrote:

“Thanks to my fans I just found out Eddie Murphy said he wants me to play Axel Foley on his new TV show Beverly Hills Cop…I’m flattered and speechless right now…Thank y’all for passing the message to me.”

Back to the interview, Murphy spoke on feeling sh*t upon by the folks at Saturday Night Live, which explains his distance from retrospectives, and the like. However, the actor claims he no longer has hard feelings:

“They were sh*tty to me on Saturday Night Live a couple of times after I’d left the show,” he says. “They said some sh*tty things. There was that David Spade sketch [when Spade showed a picture of Murphy around the time of Vampire In Brooklyn and said, ‘Look, children, a falling star’]. I made a stink about it; it became part of the folklore. What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot. I felt sh*tty about it for years, but now, I don’t have none of that.”

Sure to please his bona fide fan base, Murphy admits that there’s a good chance he may get back up stage for stand-up show:

“If I ever get back onstage, I’m going to have a really great show for you all,” he says. “An hour and a half of stand-up and about 40 minutes of my sh*tty band…But I haven’t done it since I was 27, so why f**k with it? But that’s just weighing both sides. It comes up too much for me to not do it again. It’s like, when it hits me, I’ll do it, eventually.”

The full interview with Mr. Murphy will be available on newsstands via Rolling Stone All Access on October 28th.

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