The scene Eddie Murphy refused to shoot: “I fought up until the very last day of the movie”
His star power may have waned considerably since his heyday, but Eddie Murphy still remains capable of overruling any producer or director who tries strongarming him into a scene he really doesn’t want to shoot.
The actor and comedian was able to call his own shots from the beginning of his movie career, after exploding out of the blocks to become one of the most popular and highest-paid names in Hollywood from almost the second his debut feature, Walter Hill’s buddy cop caper 48 Hrs, was released in 1982.
From there, Murphy went on a tear, delivering a consistent string of box office hits that placed him at the summit of the Tinseltown mountain, even if he was left apoplectic when his home studio didn’t even consider offering him the lead role in what ended up becoming one of its most iconic films of the 1990s.
After taking an extended break from the silver screen caused by his admission that they’d made far too many shitty movies, Murphy returned with a band when his performance in Netflix’s biographical dramedy Dolemite Is My Name landed him on the Golden Globes shortlist for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’.
He almost immediately reverted to type, though, seeking safe haven in the refuge of nostalgia. You People and Candy Cane Lane swiftly followed the legacy sequel Coming 2 America, the exact type of vapid and frivolous comedies that forced him into exile in the first place. Instead of trying to reinvent himself once more, Murphy instead returned to the rose-tinted well with Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
The long-awaited fourth instalment in his signature franchise was a solid if unspectacular addition to the canon, but even though it was intentionally designed to invoke the spirit of the ’80s action comedy, there was one iconic callback to the series that Murphy refused to shoot.
“I fought to make sure there would be no banana in the tailpipe, right up until the very last day of the movie,” the Axel F leading man and producer revealed. “Whenever we hit a little speed bump, and we needed a joke or something, the director said, ‘How about the banana in the tailpipe?’ ‘No, no, we can’t do it’. ‘You know, but the people really want to see that’. I said, ‘No, they don’t.'”
Murphy is probably wrong on that front when one thing that lures audiences into legacy sequels is the promise of self-referential nods and winks to previous entries. However, he refused to back down from his position, and as a result, the fourth Beverly Hills Cop ended without a single banana being lodged in a tailpipe. As much as filmmaker Mark Molloy tried to twist his arm, the star wouldn’t budge.
