The scene Eddie Murphy refused to shoot under any circumstances: “He just didn’t want to”
One of the many dangers of hiring an A-list movie star who’s used to getting their own way is that there’s always the risk they’ll put their foot down, throw their toys out of the pram, and refuse to do something, as multiple writers discovered when Eddie Murphy refused to budge.
When you’ve become a stand-up sensation, the breakout performer on one of the most popular shows on television, and Hollywood’s single biggest and most bankable actor by the time you’ve reached your mid-20s, it’s understandable that you wouldn’t be too keen on doing anything you don’t want to.
Murphy had reached the zenith of the industry by the mid-1980s, and even when his career started to falter after a string of bad choices and box office bombs, he was still a big enough name that he was capable of overruling writers, co-stars, filmmakers, and occasionally studios and producers if he felt like it.
Once Robin Williams had changed the game forever with his tour-de-force voice turn in Aladdin, world-famous actors began taking precedence over established voice performers in animated films. Disney was at the forefront of the trend, and with his star burning brighter than it had been for a while after The Nutty Professor, Murphy was enlisted to voice the anthropomorphised dragon, Mushu, in Mulan.
This being a Disney flick, most people would sign on for one of the company’s two-dimensional song-and-dance spectaculars in the knowledge that they’d have to belt out a tune or two, especially someone who’d released three studio albums. However, Mushu doesn’t hit a single note in Mulan because Murphy flat-out refused to do it.
“We wrote three different versions of it,” lyricist David Zippel revealed, with the Beverly Hills Cop headliner repeatedly turning his nose up at a track called ‘Keep ‘Em Guessing’. “But that’s because we didn’t understand at that point that it wasn’t that he wasn’t liking our songs, he just didn’t want to sing in the film.”
“Two songs were cut, both from Mushu,” songwriter Matt Wilder confirmed. “It was a great jazzy setup, and Eddie Murphy would not have it; he wouldn’t sing!” To try and reach a compromise, they suggested that instead of actually singing, he emulate his James Brown impression from SNL: “This comedic thing, so he could talk his way, talk-sing; let’s try that.”
Once again, though, he told them where to shove it. Even Mel Gibson sang in Pocahontas, for fuck sake, but despite his status as the crooner behind the million-selling single, ‘Party All the Time’, and the fact he’d never shown any resistance to singing onscreen before, Murphy simply wouldn’t entertain the idea that playing a major role in a Disney musical would require him to do something musical.
Not that it mattered in the long run, when Mulan made a killing at the box office and became one of the most beloved ‘Mouse House’ originals of its era, but if anyone has ever wondered why Mushu is the only main character in the entire thing who doesn’t break into song, even for a second, it’s because Murphy couldn’t be bothered.
