Eddie Murphy, circa 1982
From the Oct 11, 1982 issue of New York magazine, a profile of Eddie Murphy. Murphy was then two years into his four-year stay on SNL and only a couple months away from his feature film debut in 48 Hrs.
Murphy heads downstairs to do his first stand-up routine in months. The audience is mostly black. He goes onstage after a CBS vice-president, who has spoken at great length about the perilous state of the record industry. Murphy aggresively thanks CBS for signing him to do an album just when “things are all f—-ed up.” Cheap humor, but the crowd loves it. Murphy zips through his routines (“Guy who shot the pope wants to go straight to hell”) and then puts sunglasses and staggers around the stage, doing a cruelly accurate — and funny — impression of Stevie Wonder, complete with a rendition of the blind singer’s wandering smile.
Murphy finally sits back down at his table and is astonished when Stevie Wonder is led over to meet him. They have never met before. Murphy rises. Wonder shakes his hand and then throws a right fist at Murphy and says, “Mutha, you do me one more time and I’ll whip you!” But he’s laughing and so is Murphy.
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