“I was like, ‘What?'”
Eddie Murphyis reflecting on puzzling career advice he received fromSidney Poitier.
“They were talking about doingMalcolm X,” theComing to Americastar explained.
Jon Kopaloff/Getty; Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty
“Norman Jewisonwas putting it together.
They were gonna useThe Autobiography of Malcolm Xby Alex Haley.
And they approached me about playing Alex Haley.”
Denzel Washington in ‘Malcolm X’.Largo International NV/Getty
Murphy was still considering the offer when he crossed paths with Poitier.
“And Sidney Poitier said, ‘You are not Denzel, and you are not Morgan.
You are a breath of fresh air, and don’t f— with that!'”
“I was like, ‘What?'”
“I was in uncharted waters.
So nobody could give me advice, really.
Everything broke really big and really fast.”
“He told me I should stop cursing,” Murphy said, laughing.
“He said, ‘You wanna be in this business for a long time?
Stop that cursing.'”
That wasn’t Brown’s only advice.
“And he said, ‘You think you got a million dollars?’
I said, ‘Yeah, I do,'” Murphy recalled.
“He said, ‘You ain’t got no million dollars.’
I said, ‘Why would I bury my money in the woods?’
He said, ‘Cause the government will take it from you, so bury it.’
I was like, ‘But can’t the government take your land?’
And he said, ‘But they won’t know where the money is.'”
“That’s a true story,” Murphy said.
“That’s the kind of advice I used to get.
We didn’t have a lot of elders.”
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