Here’s Why Eddie Murphy Doesn’t Do the Eddie Murphy Laugh Anymore
Heh heh heh heh heh heh!
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When Eddie Murphy became the world’s biggest comedy star in the 1980s, his trademark laugh became iconic. Anyone who did a Murphy impression was really doing a Murphy Laugh impression, delivering smart-ass punchlines and punctuating them with his one-of-a-kind chuckle. The Murphy Laugh was also the Axel Foley Laugh, a chortle that was a signature part of the character.
But if you catch the new Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F when it debuts later this week on Netflix, the laugh is missing in action.
“Did you retire Axel’s laugh?” CBR’s Kevin Polowy asked Murphy.
“It was my laugh,” Murphy corrected him. “In the ‘80s I was like, I don’t want to be known for a laugh. If somebody was doing an impression, that’s all they did. They’d be ‘Eddie Murphy!’ and (imitates his own laugh) and the audience would go, ‘That’s it! That’s him!”
So Murphy stifled himself. “It was like, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m going to stop laughing.’ I forced myself to stop laughing, which is really an unnatural thing. You laugh, and it’s like, ‘I have to stop laughing like that,’” he confessed. “And now I don’t laugh like that anymore.”
Blame comedian impressions for killing the Eddie Murphy Laugh. “They were making too much of it,” he said. Even now, when comics imitate Murphy, they still do the laugh. “They’ll talk like Donkey (from the Shrek films) — ‘Hey, how you doing!’ — and ‘heh heh heh heh.’ That’s not me!”
For a certain generation of Murphy fans, Donkey, not Axel Foley, is the comedian’s claim to fame. Murphy already has done six months’ worth of voice work on Shrek 5, and then Donkey is getting his own feature film. “I’ll be in full Donkey mode for about a year,” Murphy says.
CBR’s Polowy told his kids that he was interviewing Murphy, news that drew blank stares until Polowy identified him as the Shrek ass. Murphy imagined the kids’ reaction: “Make sure he does that laugh!”
