The feud between Eddie Murphy and Sylvester Stallone: “I haven’t talked to him since then”
When it comes to high-profile Hollywood feuds, the reasons that bring them into existence are on a spectrum that ranges from petty to pretty serious. Actors might hold grudges over losing out on parts in big movies, and some might even be out for blood following rumours of affairs. In the case of Eddie Murphy and Sylvester Stallone, it just happened to be both.
There are many entries in Murphy’s filmography that are all-time comedy classics, but the Beverly Hills Cop franchise holds a special place in the hearts of fans all over the world. Murphy’s portrayal of Axel Foley, a Detroit detective who travels to Los Angeles to investigate the murder of his best friend, is among his finest, but the whole movie series could have ended up looking very different.
While it’s almost impossible now to imagine anyone other than Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, the initial plans involved casting Stallone in the role of Foley. However, Stallone didn’t like the comedic nature of the script and made significant rewrites to the entire thing, transforming it into a standard Sylvester Stallone action flick that even involved a finale stand-off between a Lamborghini and a freight train.
The screenwriters wanted nothing to do with Stallone’s version, and the role eventually went to Murphy. However, according to Nick de Semlyen’s book Wild and Crazy Guys, the two Hollywood stars remained great friends until there came a significant point of difference during the shooting of Beverly Hills Cop II, in which Stallone’s then-wife Brigitte Nielsen had been cast.
In a Rolling Stone interview in 1989, Murphy revealed that Stallone was absolutely incensed because they were rumours about the Beverly Hills Cop star engaging in an affair on-set with Nielsen. In fact, Stallone even called Murphy directly and accused him of sleeping with his wife, resulting in a divide that was never completely repaired.
Murphy recalled: “I haven’t talked to him since then. He thought I fucked his wife. He heard the rumour and believed it. He came after me and said, ‘You fucked my wife!’ I said, ‘Down, brother, I didn’t fuck your wife!’ We talked about it, but I guess somewhere in the back of his head, he’ll never really know the truth. Sly and I liked each other, too, but after the weirdness with Brigitte, it was ruined. I didn’t fuck her.”
The conversation takes a strange turn after that, with interviewer Bill Zehme pushing Murphy about the alleged affair and bluntly asking if Nielsen was “too leggy” for Murphy’s taste. The actor responded: “Did I ever want to fuck Gitte? No, she’s not my type… she was married. And married to somebody who was my friend. I’m not that kind of guy.”
Irrespective of whether anything actually happened on the set of Beverly Hills Cop II, Nielsen and Stallone divorced in 1987, adding further fuel to the rumours despite Murphy’s staunch public denial. Even amidst all this drama, the real question is what were the screenwriters even thinking about when they originally envisioned the Rocky star for the role of Axel Foley?
