The Longform Guide to Saturday Night Live

Brian Hiatt ? Rolling Stone ? November 2011

A sweeping, honest interview published just before Murphy announced he wouldn?t host the Oscars included his first public comments on SNL in years:

"Q: You also had some problems with Saturday Night Live.
Yeah, because they were shitty to me on Saturday Night Live a couple of times after I'd left the show. They said some shitty things. There was that David Spade sketch [when Spade showed a picture of Murphy around the time of Vampire in Brooklyn and said, ?Look, children, a falling star?]. I made a stink about it, it became part of the folklore. What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot. It was like, ?Hey, come on, man, it's one thing for you guys to do a joke about some movie of mine, but my career? I'm one of you guys. How many people have come off this show whose careers really are fucked up, and you guys are shitting on me?? And you know every joke has to go through all the producers, and ultimately, you know Lorne or whoever says, [Lorne Michaels voice] ?OK, it's OK to make this career crack ...?

I felt shitty about that for years, but now, I don't have none of that. I wouldn't go to retrospectives, but I don't let it linger. I saw David Spade four years ago. Chris Rock was like, ?Do you guys still hate each other?? and I was like, ?I don't hate David Spade, I'm cool with him.?

Q: You're still the biggest star who came from the show.
That's only because John Belushi's dead. Belushi's like Spanky of the Little Rascals series. I guess that makes me Stymie, but that's cool. I'll be Stymie. Think of all the people who came off that show. I bet you could figure out the combined grosses of people who came off Saturday Night Live in the movies?me, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd. I bet it's $15 billion. It's no coincidence?that show's like Harvard for a comic actor. When you come off the show and get into the movie business, it's like you're moving in slow motion for a couple of years. You've been working like a crazy person in a pressure cooker, then you're in the movies, just sitting in your trailer.?

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