David Spade has revealed exactly what went down with Eddie Murphy, who refused to return to Saturday Night Live for 35 years because of a beef formed on the show.
Murphy, 64, was on the show from 1980 to 1984 and vowed never to return after Spade, 61, made a joke at his expense in 1995.
Speaking to co-host Dana Carvey on their podcast Fly on the Wall, Spade said that he “loves” Murphy, but admitted: “We had some bumps in the road along the way, early on. It was weird going from being a super fan to having him hate me overnight, and to try to win him back for the last 25 years.”
Spade said of the falling out: “I was on ‘Weekend Update’ on SNL, new to the show, making fun of all the celebrities, and I made fun of him and it didn’t go well.”
The joke in question came after Murphy’s film Vampire in Brooklyn flopped, with Spade showing a photo of the actor and saying: “Look, children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish!”
Spade said of the aftermath: “He called me and we had it out. Actually, he had it out, I didn’t fight back, really. Because I did feel a little guilty about it, and he did make some sense. I just didn’t like that because, you know, he was a hero.”
The SNL alums seemed to make peace at the 50th anniversary in February 2025. “We got to the point, I saw him—I’ve seen him once or twice—and I saw him at the 50th and we talked a little bit and everything’s fine,” Spade said.
“And then he admitted on the show—not admitted, they just asked him about it—and he said, ‘Yeah, we’re all good.’ So we’re all good."
Murphy first returned to SNL in 2019, and told The New York Times in 2024 that he went through plenty of internal struggles before choosing peace.
“I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show,” he said, crediting himself with keeping SNL on the air during a rough patch in the 1980s. He added of Spade’s joke: “I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of racist, I thought—I felt it was racist.”
Later, Murphy said that despite initially seeing SNL as “dirty motherf---ers,” he decided to bury the hatchet by returning to the screen.
In his recent documentary Being Eddie, he said, “That little friction I had with SNL was 35 years ago. I don’t have no smoke with David Spade. I don’t have heat with any of that or nobody. I was like, ‘Hey, let me go to SNL and smooth it all out.’ And I did.”
