Eddie Murphy definitely wasn’t going to pull a Keanu Reeves in “John Wick” for action-comedy film “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.”
Murphy said on the “Today” show that he “felt like (an) old man” when filming the fourth franchise installment. Murphy first played the titular Detroit detective who goes undercover in Los Angeles back in 1984.
“I did ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ when I was 21, and I’m 63 now,” Murphy said.
“Now, I would rather not do any stunts,” he said. “We were shooting something and the director [Mark Molloy] said, ‘I want you to come out of this place and run down those steps.’ And After we shot and he’s like, ‘Can you come down with more urgency and faster?’ And I was like, ‘No!’ I was like, ‘I’m not doing anything action. Don’t call me unless you offer me the same type of shit you would offer Morgan Freeman.’”
“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” also marks the return of Murphy’s original co-stars John Taggart and Judge Reinhold. Kevin Bacon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Taylour Paige join for the fourth film.
But it’s Eddie’s franchise.
“‘Beverly Hills Cop’ was my first movie that I’m the lead in. If I travel overseas they call me Axel Foley,” Murphy said. “Axel is an everyman. He’s not a superhero, a super-cop — he’s the everyman that rises to the occasion. I think that’s why people like it. And more than anything, he’s funny.”
Actress Paige recently told Empire that the cast’s goal was to make Murphy laugh on set.
“The objective was to try and get the man who made the world laugh to laugh,” Paige said. “I found it quite fun to crack him. I grew up watching ‘The Nutty Professor’ and ‘Dr. Dolittle.’ It was like I knew him — it was surreal.”
She added of the franchise’s long-awaited return, “The world often feels like it’s in a chronic coma. And without being too grandiose, I want to be a part of something which helps people to snap out of it.”
Watch Murphy’s interview with Al Roker here:
