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Our favorite quotes from the two Golden Globe honorees, Eddie Murphy and Ryan Murphy
LOS ANGELES — It is quite interesting that on the 80th Golden Globe Awards show come January 10, we are honoring two Murphys—the 61-year-old Brooklyn-born comedian actor Eddie Murphy as the Cecil B. DeMille awardee for his outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment, and the prolific writer-director Ryan Murphy as the recipient of the Carol Burnett Award for his outstanding contributions to television.
Eddie, who had a telephone operator mom and a transit police officer-amateur actor dad, revealed that his early influences included Richard Pryor, Peter Sellers, Robin Williams and Charlie Chaplin among others.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) first interviewed Eddie in 1987 for Beverly Hills Cop 2, then in 1996 for The Nutty Professor, followed by Dreamgirls (2006), Shrek the Third (2007), Tower Heist (2011), Mr. Church (2016), Dolemite is My Name (2019) and then Coming 2 America (2021).
Ryan, who started his career as a journalist working for The Miami Herald, New York Daily News and Entertainment Weekly among others, began his scriptwriting career when Steven Spielberg purchased his script "Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn?" in the late 1990s.
We have interviewed Ryan since he started his hit musical TV drama series "Glee" in 2009, then in "Eat Pray Love" (2010), "American Horror Story" (2011), "The Normal Heart" (2014), "Scream Queens" and "AHS: Hotel" (2015), "Feud" (2017), "American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace" (2017), "Pose" (2017), "The Politician" (2019) and "The Prom" (2020).
Below we have gathered some of our favorite quotes from these two talented Murphys.
Eddie Murphy
Looking at all your achievements, what makes you most proud?
My family, my children. I have ten kids, and they're all good people and smart, and that's my biggest accomplishment. That's my legacy, my children.
Who among your kids show signs of following your footsteps?
Quite a few of my kids have an interest in the arts. Three of my daughters are interested in acting. Three of my sons are interested in acting.
They write. Two of my daughters write. One of my daughters paints, so yeah, it's the family business. I'm definitely an artsy dad, and they're in artsy surroundings, so some of my kids are pretty artsy.
Who makes you laugh?
Even though I'm a funny person, I'm not a connoisseur about it, and I'm an easy laugh. I see new comedians all the time. I'll see comedians now, and I'll be like who is this person and not even know it could be.
You know what I laugh at the most, though? I watch that show "Ridiculousness" and that makes me laugh. That's a great way to escape from it all and not think about anything for a half-hour is that show.
Where did you get the idea of Prince Akeem?
Prince Akeem, the idea of "Coming to America" started with me. I had just broke up with a girl, and I was on tour, and a conversation got started about meeting and probably, you know, 25 years old at the time and had a conversation about meeting a girl that didn't know who I was because at that time I was like really, really like just got in the business, just really starting to get people really knowing me. It was so great to have a girl not knowing who I am, and that's where the idea started.
Do you follow a specific diet to look youthful?
No, I don't have a specific diet or anything. It's just genetic if anything. I think comedians don't age like everybody else. I think comedians, because we laugh so much...I'll have a good belly laugh where tears are coming out, you know, once or twice a week.
And you know, people go years without having that. I think that laughter is at the center of it. I think you don't age the same. That's my only explanation. I know people that are my age, they graduated with me, and they look older than me. I'm like, maybe they don't laugh enough.
Ryan Murphy
As a kid, what do you remember were your first creative things that you made?
I have a very vivid memory of it. It was very, very interesting. My grandmother took me to a bakery. I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was four years old and every Friday she'd take me to this bakery, and I was allowed to get a cookie. It was a big thing in my life and we went to this place called Rosalyn's Bakery and they had an Easter contest so they had mimeographed sheets of paper with an Easter egg on it and they asked their young customers to color in the Easter egg and then there would be a first prize and the person who won the first prize got a cake in the shape of an Easter bunny.
So I went home and I looked at this sheet of paper and I really wanted to do it and I told my grandmother that I didn't want to do something that looked like an ordinary Easter egg, and she said well, why. Why – this color paper yellow is an Easter color. I said no, I want to do something crazy, so she supported me and I remember I did my version of like an op art, like you're probably too young to remember that kind of weird colorful thing but I did a very bizarre looking Easter egg and I took it back to Rosalyn the bakery and I thought well that's the end. I'll never see that again and two days later, the manager of the bakery called my grandmother and asked to speak to me on the phone and I was so shocked.
It was like a rock star calling my house. The manager of this bakery and he said you won and I said what do you mean and he said you had the most unusual colorful Easter egg. You won the prize and I hung up the phone and burst into tears. It was so vivid to me this idea that I could be rewarded in the world by doing something in an unusual, non-traditional way.
I learned that very, very young but that was my first creative thing and it was a really, really important thing and I remember my parents were so proud and as I would be if my child won anything from a bakery. Little kid doing some project like that but it was a great lesson and also really put me on a path that I have stayed on pretty much my whole life.
You used to be a journalist for The Miami Herald doing press junkets. How did that job or what aspect of that job inform you about Hollywood?
When I was doing it, that was a time in the business that I loved because there were a lot of mid-budget films, at that time. In the late '80, early '90s, I would say. I was doing the journalism thing, from like '89 to '95. So, during that time, a lot of the movies that were being made, were starring women. I worked with a lot of women, but the first time I met Meryl Streep, was on a junket.
I did a junket with Jessica Lange. I did a junket with Diane Keaton. I did a junket with Kathy Bates. All these people, that I've worked with. So, it's a really good question. I loved those movies. I loved movies that were about, taking-on-the-system movies. And at that period of time, there actually were movie stars like Meryl and Jessica, and Sally Field, and Diane who could get movies green lit, that were not necessarily romantic comedies, but they were sort of, women-taking-on-the-system movies.
I loved those. And I love the underdog spirit, of those movies. Those are the things I was drawn to, and those were the interviews that I would prepare a lot for. And I would write, I kind of would only really write about the women.
So many times that, I think after I interviewed Cher six times, she said to me, "What are you doing? How many more times do I have to see you? What are you really doing?" And I said, "Oh, I'm trying to write." And she goes, "You should do that. I can tell, you'd be good at that." So, thank you Cher, for my career, because she kind of did give me incentive. Like, "Oh, maybe I can try this." But I loved that.
Whatever happened to your script "Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn?" which was your first script that sold to Steven Spielberg?
Steven bought that project, and I felt that I was meeting God. So, you'd be ushered in, and Steven were to give you script notes, and I've since become friends with Steven, and he's so great.
I was just in awe of him. I grew up loving his movies. I still love his movies. And it was one of those projects that had every young actor in the world attached to it before they became a big star. There were many, many young women who were going to make that movie.
And then what happened was it was in development hell for a long time, and then I went off to do television and then I did, Popular, and then I was off to the races in that world. I was like, "Oh, I think I want to stay in Tel Aviv for a while." So, I just put the Audrey Hepburn project to the side.
And once in a while, I'll get a call about, "Do you want to redo this or would you be interested in this?" But I wouldn't. I felt like that's in my past. But all the things I was interested in were two things: strong women and underdogs, and things that ask questions about the establishment. I've always been interested in those things and underdog stories.
So, if you learn from a failure, what do you learn from a success?
Terror. Because when you have a success, you think well how am I going to do that again, I'm never going to get that again, I'll never in a million years hit that bullseye again. And that is a terror.
I've been feeling that since 2003 with my first thing that hit big, which was "Nip/Tuck." But I recently got to a point in my life where I'm like you know what, I kind of have had a lot of things that have been successful and I feel like I'm of a certain age, I have three children now, my life is very different, and I've run around the track. So, every time I just keep doing it, it's just an additional lap that I feel like I'm doing it because I want to, no, because I have to?
So now, I am just trying to do things that challenge myself, that bring up other people, that bring new voices to the foray. So, once I switched away from the panic of success to the idea, to just sort of relax into my creative life, it's been kind of liberating I will say, I am not afraid as I was.
But I had that period in my career where I did "Glee," "American Horror Story," "American Crime Story," "Nip/Tuck," "Feud," I mean I had all of these things back to back in a period of 10 years, 15 years, that were really clicking. And I became exhausted by the idea that I had to keep being that same person.
So, it's not to say that I don't want that, but it's just to say like everything that you do is about a different thing and all the things that I'm working on right now, I am really, really passionate about and I am making them for the process of making them and not for the reward of making them.
—MGP, GMA Integrated News
