Eddie Murphy reveals what sparked long running feud with David Spade
Dylan Murray
Featured Image Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Cindy Ord/VF23/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Eddie Murphy has explained how his long-standing feud with David Spade all began with a 1995 SNL joke he thought was 'kind of racist'.
Murphy - a former SNL alumnus himself - and David Spade had a shaky relationship for several years due to a joke made by Spade on the hit NBC show.
The joke itself took aim at Murphy’s movie career, which had taken a slight downturn after hitting incredible heights in the late 1980s.
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Riffing on Murphy's box office bomb Vampire in Brooklyn, Spade said: "Look children, it's a falling star, make a wish."
After Spade made the simple yet piercing joke, Murphy held anger against his fellow comedian for several years.
While they have since reconciled, Murphy recently discussed their previous shaky relationship in an interview with the New York Times about his life and career.
“When David Spade said that s**t about my career on SNL, it was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house!'
"I’m one of the family, and you’re f**king with me like that? It hurt my feelings.”
While Spade’s run on SNL spanned from 1990 to 1996, Murphy’s was a decade earlier, being a member of the show from 1980 to 1984, some of the earliest seasons of the NBC show.
Murphy said: “This is Saturday Night Live. I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show.
"Now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career?”
“And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career… I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought... I felt it was racist.”
The joke led to Murphy not appearing on Saturday Night Live for decades, inevitably making his long-awaited return on the 40th-anniversary episode of the show in 2015.
Speaking about his relationship with Spade and the show now, Murphy claims there is no longer any ill-will between him and Spade.
“Worked out great,” Murphy revealed, “I’m cool with David Spade. I went back to SNL. I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.”
For his part, Spade wrote in his 2015 memoir Almost Interesting: "A jab like the one I had directed at Eddie can be the thing that starts to turn public opinion against someone.
"I know for a fact that I can’t take it when it comes my way. I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one."
UNILAD has contacted David Spade's representatives for a comment.