When Eddie Murphy passes away, the comedian and actor will be celebrated for his decades-long career, but fans hoping to pay their respects in person will be disappointed.
“I’m never having a funeral,” he told Fox 5 DC. “I mean, I’m going to die like everyone else but they [my family] know, no funeral … Just let me go out quietly.”
The morbid conversation arose as Murphy discussed the legacy of his iconic character, Axel Foley. He had been asked about the 40th anniversary of Beverly Hills Cop and its famous theme song, “Axel F.”
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“It’s fly to have some theme music that you could play and you’d know I’m coming out,” Murphy said. “That’s fly, got the theme music [like] James Bond, Indiana Jones.”
Murphy, 63, explained that he views the fast-talking cop Axel Foley as a significant part of his legacy.
“Over the years, people would ask, ‘You ever think about playing the Black James Bond?’ I was like, ‘I don’t have to. I got Axel Foley. I have a character already,’” he said. “You could literally play that one day when I pass on 50 years from now and people would smile at my funeral.”
He jokily mimed a memorial scene where pallbearers and grave diggers laid him to rest to the tune of the recognizable synth line from “Axel F.” He clarified, “That’s just a joke because I’m never having a funeral.”
Murphy has been making interview rounds to promote the latest installment in the Axel Foley saga. Netflix released Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F on Wednesday, July 3.
The first new Beverly Hills Cop movie in 30 years, which has been in development since the mid-1990s, follows Foley as he unravels a plot threatening his daughter and former partner. Judge Reinhold and Bronson Pinchot reprise their roles, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kevin Bacon join the cast as new characters.
Bacon, 65, described working with Murphy as a “bucket list thing,” praising Murphy as “one of our greatest actors ever.”
“Eddie is somebody who is very relaxed and loose and present actor. He comes in and famously does a lot of improvising,” Bacon said. “But when he improvises, there’s improvisation where you can really feel that the improviser is trying to go for a laugh. I never saw him trying to be funny either on camera or off camera, and he’s still hilarious. To the point where sometimes I was about to lose it just because he would look at me.”
