#EDDIE MURPHY DELIRIOUS TRIAL#
Brown’s soda – live coverage of the Conrad Murray trial a few minutes of Casino (“I think it’s funny when Pesci hits Rickles with the phone”) a Good Times episode that Murphy instantly recognizes as the one where they think there’s dog food in the old lady’s meatloaf. At first, we just watch TV for a while as he sips from a Dr. His shoes are polished black leather, until he switches to sparkly black running shoes to bowl. This is Murphy’s first extended print interview in many years, so his wariness is understandable: He half-jokes that when he posed for his last magazine cover, they printed his smiling picture underneath the headline “Eddie Ain’t Shit.” He’s wearing a gray T-shirt with a LiveStrong logo on the front, black jeans, a diamond-studded watch and a diamond ring not much smaller than a golf ball. Just inside, pictures of his many children are arranged on a shelf, near a bar counter that holds various awards, as well as pictures of him with Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama – the president looks even more excited to be meeting Murphy than vice versa. When Murphy first emerges today, meeting me on a wicker couch facing a gigantic TV on a shaded veranda behind his house, he seems reserved, cautious, his eyes shielded by black-rimmed sunglasses. “So maybe it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t remember he was able to do that.'” His part as a street-smart petty thief in his latest movie, the Ratner-directed Tower Heist, is a similar affirmation – at an early screening, the audience roared when he simply said, “Shut up, bitch.” “I haven’t done a streety guy, working class, blue-collar character in ages,” Murphy says. It’s quickly clear that even at age 50, even after a long run of roles he describes as “family stuff, guys in suits with perfect hair,” Murphy’s delirious, essential Eddie-ness is intact.