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.
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The joke itself took aim at Murphy’s movie career, which had taken a slight downturn after hitting incredible heights in the late 1980s.
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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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"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.
Dylan Murray