In the latest shot fired in the neverending feud between the two comedians, Eddie Murphy recently dished about Bill Cosby’s reaction to his sudden rise to fame.
When Murphy burst onto the scene in the 1980s, he said it ruffled the elder comedian’s feathers. After all, he landed on “Saturday Night Live” at just 19, and his “Eddie Murphy: Raw” broke box office records and is still the highest-grossing stand-up special ever.
“This is back when it was, you know, one Black person at a time was getting in the mix,” Murphy said on a recent episode of “The New York Times Interview Podcast.”
He also corrected the old rumors about his relationship with fellow comedian Richard Pryor, stating that despite what some say, Pryor never gave him a “hard time.” It was Cosby that did.
It’s clear that Murphy’s old nemesis still gets under his skin. “Bill Cosby gave me a hard time … about language and all that s**t,” he revealed. “Language was the way he could come at it,” Murphy stated. “It wasn’t so much language; it was the times that we were in.”
“So when I come on the scene, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby are like, ‘Oh, this is the new s*** that’s coming up?’ If there’s a new thing coming on, that’s a threat to whatever their thing is,” explained “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” actor. “That’s what Bill Cosby had.”
Murphy admitted he was “puppy dogging” both comedic stars back in the day, but he believes Pryor saw a reflection of himself in the young comic and ultimately wasn’t threatened. “Bill Cosby was like, ‘Is this the new way it’s gonna be now? They’re gonna be onstage grabbing their d*** and talking all crazy?’”
Murphy elaborated further on Cosby, “So he could come at me with ‘Oh, the language!’ when it was more: ‘It’s one at a time, and is this the new guy who’s gonna knock me out of the spot.’ That’s what was going on back then. They was competitive in that respect. I wasn’t even thinking about them like that,” said the megastar.
Yo, Eddie Murphy following up Bill Cosby @ Sammy Davis Jr's 60th Anniversary Special was 😭🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/Gu5TgC6Lfm
— B MAD 730 (@Bmad730) December 8, 2023
Murphy also waxed poetic about how “wonderful” it was to meet Pryor in person on a flight from Atlanta. “I made Richard laugh. For real, you don’t see Richard laugh a lot. I could have died right there,” Murphy fondly remembered.
He said when the flight landed Pryor even drove him home. “He was always cool, but Richard was old enough to be my dad, and Richard had substance problems and alcohol and all these demons. … We had nothing in common outside of the fact that we were both funny,” he stated. Though Murphy said Pryor was never a mentor, “he was my idol. I idolized him. My idols are Richard Pryor, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, and Elvis Presley.”
Not on that list? Cosby. Murphy has been poking fun at “America’s Dad” for decades, and no venue is off-limits: awards shows, “SNL” monologues, interviews.
But the sparring took a harsher tone in 2019 when Cosby’s spokesperson issued a strange statement on behalf of the comedian, who was in Prison at the time for an aggravated indecent assault conviction in connection to the drugging and molesting of a woman.
Likening Murphy to a “Hollywood slave,” Andrew Wyatt said, “One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave,” referring to Murphy’s decision to return to host “SNL” after three decades.
Eddie Murphy’s revenge 32 years after Cosby slammed him was brutal 😂😂😂
— Ken Barnes (@kenjbarnes1) December 23, 2019
“If you had told me 30 years ago that I’d be this boring, stay-at-home house dad, and Bill Cosby would be in jail …even I would have took that bet. <Cosby voice> Who is America’s Dad now?!” #EddieOnSNL pic.twitter.com/vVf4LOrSvd
Many speculate this was in response to Murphy’s opening monologue during his “SNL” return, where the dad of 10 took a funny swipe at Cosby, joking that they had switched roles in the public eye.
“If you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would’ve have took that bet,” he said. “Let me tell you, Who is America’s Dad now?!”
The bitter feud continues.
