The childhood dream role Eddie Murphy refused to play: “Either the best or worst idea in the world”
Being the biggest movie star in the world comes with certain privileges, which Eddie Murphy decided not to weaponise when the perfect opportunity presented itself for the actor and comedian to realise a childhood dream, although he had his reasons for rejecting the once-in-a-lifetime chance.
The former Saturday Night Live favourite’s ascension was so rapid that he was the single most bankable star in Hollywood within four years of his silver screen debut. Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs, John Landis’ Trading Places, Martin Brest’s Beverly Hills Cop, and Michael Ritchie’s The Golden Child combined to earn over $650 million at the box office on combined production costs of less than $60 million, turning Murphy into a moneymaking machine.
While his biggest inspirations may have been Elvis Presley and Richard Pryor, the stand-up-turned-cinematic superstar was also a bit of a geek. He’d been raised on a steady diet of cheesy sci-fi as a child and had developed a healthy appreciation of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. When the franchise made the leap to blockbuster cinema, the planets started to align.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in December 1979, less than a year before Murphy made his SNL debut. By the time the fourth theatrical instalment in the spacefaring saga entered development, he’d left the sketch show behind to conquer the movie industry as its most bankable leading man.
With earnings steadily dropping across the sequels, 1986’s The Voyage Home needed an injection of freshness to shake up the formula, and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg set his sights as high as possible. “He said, ‘I have either the best idea in the world or the worst idea in the world,'” Leonard Nimoy recalled to Trek Movie.
“Eddie Murphy said he would kill to be in a Star Trek movie,” the longtime Spock continued. “And I said, ‘I think you are right: it is either the best or worst idea in the world’. I had several meetings with Mr Murphy, and what I said to him: ‘We are very flattered you want to be in a Star Trek movie, we admire you, you admire us, neither of us wants to do any harm to each other, so we will work on a script.'”
Unfortunately, that’s when things fell apart. Murphy didn’t like the script he was offered and made The Golden Child instead, which didn’t work out in anyone’s best interests when he ended up calling it a “piece of shit,” which Nimoy seemed aware of: “I think he said later that he wisehd he would have done the Star Trek movie.”
That wasn’t entirely true, though. Like any self-respecting fan of the franchise, Murphy wanted to travel boldly where no man had ever gone before. “I was going to be the one they met when they got to San Francisco,” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘No, I want to go up and beam up and be on the ship’. So I didn’t do it.”
In the draft he read, Murphy discovered that “they had me talking jive to Spock,” which wasn’t what he had in mind. He dreamed of setting foot on the Enterprise, and when he realised that wasn’t on the cards, he turned it down.
