Eddie Murphy Says 'Terminator' Inspired Him to Make 'Coming 2 America'
Amazon Studios/Paramount Pictures
‘The Nutty Professor’ star recalls how he got an idea for the sequel to his 1988 comedy after watching Arnold Schwarzenegger de-age in a scene in the ‘Terminator’ movie.
Mar 5, 2021
AceShowbiz – As unlikely as it sounds, “Coming 2 America” was partly inspired by a “Terminator” movie. Ahead of the release of the comedy sequel, Eddie Murphy has revealed how he got an idea for the follow-up to 1988’s “Coming to America” after watching Arnold Schwarzenegger de-age in a scene in one of the movies from the sci-fi action film franchise around six years ago.
“You know what happened, I was watching, one of those ‘Terminator’ movies with Schwarzenegger and they used the special effect where they made him really young,” Murphy tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I was like, ‘If they did that, we could do a scene where we’re young’ … and that was the piece that made it all sort of fall into place.” The comedian was likely referring to 2016’s “Terminator: Genisys”.
Prior to that, Murphy never thought about making a sequel to “Coming to America” despite fans’ wish for one. “When we finished the original ‘Coming to America’, it ended on ‘they live happily ever after,’ so we never thought about doing a sequel,” he admits. “You know, usually sequels come a year or after the original movie, so we never thought about it.”
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“But then ‘Coming to America’ became part of the culture, and little lines from the movie, and catchphrases like ‘Sexual Chocolate’ [took off], and people dress up as the characters [for Halloween]. It just stayed around,” he explains how the movie stays relevant after more than 30 years.
“Coming 2 America” did use CGI for a scene that features de-aged Murphy and Arsenio Hall. The said scene is a flashback to the time Akeem and Semmi visited a club in search of a bride-to-be for the former. There, they met the overzealous Mary Junson (Leslie Jones), who introduced Akeem to weed shortly before their one-night stand.
The CGI apart, Murphy and Hall still had to spend hours in the makeup chairs to reprise their other characters, including the barbershop’s Morris, Saul and Clarence, the Rev. Brown and fan-favorite Randy Watson. “It’s the same exact long, drawn-out, five hours in the makeup process,” Murphy says of the transformation process. “That didn’t get any easier.”
“Coming 2 America” is now available for stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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