Eddie Murphy recently joined Entertainment Weekly to promote his Netflix documentary “Being Eddie” and looked back to when he presented best picture to Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor.” Murphy deliberately used his time at the Oscars podium to call out the Academy for failing to recognize Black actors over the years. He thought the bit would generate headlines in the Hollywood press, but Murphy says in the doc that he was surprised to discover there were barely any the next day.
“I remember being with Robin Williams backstage,” Murphy recalled to EW about that Oscars night. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna say this.’ And he goes to me, like, ‘But why go there?’ I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t think it’s funny?’ It was more, ‘Is it funny?’ Rather than, ‘It’s controversial.’ I was trying to be funny and say a little something, but be funny too. Have a little edge to what I said.”
In his introduction to announcing the best picture nominees, Murphy recounted how his manager told him the Academy was inviting him to present at the Oscars and that he originally wanted to decline.
“I’m not going because they haven’t recognized Black people in motion pictures,” Murphy told the Oscars audience. “And I’ll probably never win an Oscar for saying this, but hey, what the hey, I gotta say it. Actually, I might not be in any trouble because the way it’s been going is about every 20 years we get one, so we ain’t due to about 2004. So by that time, this will all be blown over.”
At the time, only three acting winners in the Oscars’ 60-year history were Black performers (Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier and Louis Gossett Jr.). Denzel Washington would join the group two years later by winning best supporting actor for “Glory.”