Eddie Murphy, one among the most important stars to interrupt out of "Saturday Night Live," has spent the past week preparing to host the show, which can be his first time performing comedy there in 35 years.
The comedian was just 19 years old when he joined the cast in 1980, and he has been credited with helping save the NBC series at a time of crisis. He briefly appeared at Studio 8H during "SNL's" 40th anniversary special but memorably didn't tell any jokes.
This time are going to be different. Murphy has said in numerous interviews that he and therefore the show's team are brooding about bringing back several of his most famous characters, including Gumby, Buckwheat, Mister Robinson and Velvet Jones. "We're talking a few Bill Cosby thing maybe," Murphy told Al Roker in the week, which is particularly notable because the comedian refused to impersonate Cosby when he briefly appeared for the anniversary episode in 2015.
This time, however, Murphy said "I'm down for whatever. As long as it's really, really funny."
So let's take a glance at the history of the characters we may even see reappear on our TV screens this Saturday.
Several generations grew abreast of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," and while many comedians tried to spoof the beloved children's TV host, Murphy's parody could also be the foremost memorable.
Murphy spoke with a similarly loving and upbeat tone, but in his neighborhood, he was running from slumlords and eviction notices.
In real world, Fred Rogers said that when he met Murphy, the comedian "just threw his arms around me the primary time he saw me, and he said, 'The real Mister Rogers!'" During one late-night TV interview, David Letterman showed a Polaroid of the 2 men smiling side by side and asked Rogers how he felt about all of the popular culture parodies.
"Well, a number of them aren't very funny, but i feel tons of them are through with real kindness in their hearts," Rogers replied. Later, his wife, Joanne Rogers, told documentary filmmakers: "There were some that weren't as kind in nature. If they made fun of (Fred's) philosophy, that was the sole thing that offended him, I think."
Murphy's combat the children's Claymation character was that behind the scenes, Gumby was a cigar-smoking, grizzled, obscene and harsh showbiz type. albeit "The Gumby Show" debuted within the 1950s and stopped airing within the '60s, the "SNL" sketch's popularity caused the general public to rediscover Gumby via video tapes and syndication.
"At first i used to be like, 'How are you able to do this to Gumby?' But my dad thought it had been hilarious," Joe Clokey, son of Gumby creator Art Clokey, told outing in 2007. "You could say Eddie Murphy put me through school, because he was a part of the Gumby revival within the '80s."
Murphy brought his version of Buckwheat, of "Our Gang"/"Little Rascals" fame, to Studio 8H in 1981, repeatedly uttering the catchphrase "Otay!" and singing his version of songs like "Three Times a woman."
The comedian had a touch in his own stand-up act about the name Buckwheat. "I'm from a predominantly black family, and that i have yet to run into a relative named Buckwheat at a cookout, you know?" he joked on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." "You can't just walk off the road and walk up to somebody saying, 'Hey, how you doing? My name's Tom. What's yours?' 'My name's Buckwheat, man. Nice to satisfy you.'"
Murphy's Buckwheat character became so popular that he eventually decided to kill him off. "It was one among the most well liked characters in late-night television at that point," producer Dick Ebersol said in "Live From New York: the entire, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live." But by 1983, Murphy told Ebersol: "I can't stand it anymore. Everywhere i'm going, people say, 'Do Buckwheat, do this, do that.' i would like to kill him."
So he died. the following sketch was also a masterful takedown of how the media covers shootings and high-profile acts of violence. In it, Murphy's Buckwheat is assassinated and world leaders mourn. on the other hand the eye turns to the accused killer, also played by Murphy
Velvet Jones, unlike the opposite characters above, doesn't spoof one particular widely known person. He's a pimp initially, and he often appears in fake commercials, trying to hawk get-rich-quick schemes (some of which are too inappropriate to urge into here). We're unsure how Murphy will update Jones, but if he can bring back the older pop-culture references, this one should not be too difficult to resurrect