When Eddie Murphy passes away, he will be remembered for his extensive career, but fans hoping to attend a memorial in person will be disappointed.
“I’m never having a funeral,” Murphy 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 topic arose while Murphy was discussing the legacy of one of his most famous characters, Axel Foley.
During the interview, McCarthy asked Murphy about the 40th anniversary of Beverly Hills Cop and the film’s iconic theme song, “Axel F.”
“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.”
“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 jokingly mimed a scene where pallbearers and grave diggers place him in his final resting place to the recognizable synth line.
“That’s just a joke because I’m never having a funeral,” the actor clarified.
Murphy has been actively promoting the latest installment of the Axel Foley saga. Netflix released Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F on Wednesday, July 3. This film, the first new Beverly Hills Cop movie in 30 years, continues from where the series left off in the mid-1990s.
It follows Foley as he investigates a plot threatening his daughter and former partner. Judge Reinhold and Bronson Pinchot return to reprise their roles, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kevin Bacon join the film as new characters.
Bacon, 65, described working with Murphy as a “bucket list thing” and praised Murphy as “one of our greatest actors ever.”
“Eddie is somebody who is a very relaxed and present actor. He comes in and famously does a lot of improvising,” Bacon shared with People earlier this month.
“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.”
