Do we like Eddie Murphy?
Our score: 7 out of 10. One real stain from his 80s stand-up, owned and apologised for, and no sign of harm in his recent words or work that I could find.
Murphy is one of the few comics whose career runs through the 1980s to now without a long gap. In April 2026 the American Film Institute gave him its Life Achievement Award, with Spike Lee presenting and Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Martin Lawrence and Mike Myers among the speakers. The night raised over $2.5 million for AFI's education programs.
The big stain is his early stand-up. His 1983 special Delirious and 1987's Raw had material about gay people and AIDS that landed badly then and worse now. In 1996 he said he “deeply regret[s] any pain all this has caused,” and in a 2019 New York Times interview he called the jokes ignorant.
He hasn't scrubbed the lot, though. In a 2019 interview he said “Some of it, I cringe when I watch,” and he also put it down to the context of the times. That's an apology with a bit of a shrug in it. It reads as an old comic owning a bad chapter, not a man who dug in.
On the harm check, I searched for his words on trans people, women, migrants, vaccines and the climate and found nothing nasty, no conspiracy slide and no culture-war grifting. His recent work is mostly big studio comedies and sequels, and I found no sign he keeps company with people who push harm. The record is thin on his politics, so I'm saying what turned up and not guessing at what he believes.
On the good-person side, there's a telling bit of SNL history. When the show's 40th anniversary special wanted him to play Bill Cosby, Norm Macdonald said Murphy declined because he “will not kick a man when he is down.” Those are Macdonald's words, not Murphy's, and Cosby's camp thanked him for it. Murphy was also willing to cop a cost for a principle in 1988, when he used his Oscars appearance to call out the Academy over recognition of Black actors.
So where does that land? Murphy is a sound yes. The old jokes are a real mark and worth knowing about, but he's apologised, and the last few decades look clean. If you've loved Donkey or Axel Foley, you can keep loving them.