Dig out your best zoot suit, folks, Eddie Murphy is hitting the road on a stand-up tour.
After the recent news the legendary comic performer would be recording a stand-up special for Netflix, Murphy has revealed he’ll be touring the new show too.
Before his time in mega franchises such as Beverly Hills Cop and the Shrek films, Murphy was a notorious stand-up comedian. Now, after a few years away from the stage, he’s been enticed back to stand-up. The hefty pay packet of a reported $70 million from Netflix probably made the decision fairly easy for him.
After years away from the stand-up spotlight, however, it’d be pretty ballsy of Murphy to just dive in to recording a Netflix special with little more than a soundcheck. It comes as no surprise then, but welcome news nonetheless, he’ll be touring in 2020.
Murphy let the news slip of his return to stand-up during his appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, revealing how a conversation with the late Don Rickles persuaded him to get back into stand-up comedy, saying Rickles went ‘on and on and on’ for him to do it.
Murphy then confessed: ‘I’m going to do it again. Everything just has to be right. You have to get up there and start working out,’ referring to the comedy clubs.
And, true to his word, it seems Murphy will be getting up there and starting to work out his routine as, appearing on Netflix’s Present Company with Krista Smith podcast, Murphy revealed his plans.
The 58-year-old said he’ll be hosting Saturday Night Live in December, before adding: ‘And then next year in 2020 I’m going to go on the road and do some strand-up.’
Murphy made a name for himself as a cast member on SNL in the 80s, so it’ll surely be welcome return for the veteran performer to the legendary New York stage.
Murphy hasn’t been seen on the live comedy scene since the late 1980s, when the release of his concert film Eddie Murphy Raw grossed around $50 million.
Before we see his return though, he’s set to appear in another Netflix original – the Rudy Ray Moore comedy biopic Dolemite is My Name, about filmmaker Moore setting out to make the blaxploitation film Dolemite in 1975. The film comes to Netflix on October 4.
Meanwhile, next year will also see the long-awaited sequel to Murphy’s Coming to America, tentatively titled Coming 2 America, which is set to hit cinemas in August 2020.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.