Eddie Murphy Jokes About Bill Cosby In ‘SNL’ Speech: ‘Who’s America’s Dad Now?’
Dec. 23 2019, Updated 6:17 p.m. ET
Eddie Murphy is back! On Saturday, December 21, the comedian returned to Saturday Night Live for the first time since 1984.
“It’s been a really long time,” he admitted as the audience went wild.
Murphy — who stars in a the new Netflix movie Dolemite Is My Name — started his monologue by talking about how much has changed since he quit stand-up.
“I just had a new baby, just about a year ago,” he said. “That means I have 10 kids now, 11 if you count Kevin Hart.”
RadarOnline.com readers know that last Christmas, the funnyman’s daughter Bria Murphy shared a photo on Instagram of the star posing with all his children — including Angel, his formerly estranged daughter with Mel B.
“My kids are actually pretty much my whole life now, but if you had told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would’ve took that bet!” Murphy, 58, joked.
“Who is America’s Dad now?” he added, mimicking Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable voice.
Readers know Cosby, 82, was nicknamed “America’s Dad” during his years of playing the character — a wholesome and hilarious father — on The Cosby Show. Now, the disgraced comic is serving three to 10 years in a state prison in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. His sentence came after a Montgomery County in 2018 convicted him of drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004.
After Murphy joked about Cosby on SNL, the jailbird’s rep bashed him for his allegedly insensitive comments.
“One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave,” Andrew Wyatt said in a written statement.
The rep added that it was Cosby who “broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry” so that Murphy and other black comedians could perform. “Remember, Mr. Murphy, that Bill Cosby became legendary because he used comedy to humanize all races, religions and genders; but your attacking Mr. Cosby helps you embark on just becoming click bait sic,” he added.
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Murphy was joined on stage by Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Dave Chappelle and Kenan Thompson during his SNL speech. He has not responded to Cosby’s rep’s statement.
