Eddie Murphy’s Return to ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will (Hopefully) Include Some of His Classic Characters

Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live Characters

This season of Saturday Night Live is an exciting one because it will finally be bringing back Eddie Murphy as host for the first time since 1984, which was also the last year that he was part of the late night sketch show’s cast. Making it even more special is the fact that it will be the Christmas episode on December 21, and as a little present for all of his longtime fans, Murphy confirmed that he will be bringing back some of his most beloved characters from the time he spent on the show.

Eddie Murphy appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week as part of the show’s series of episodes being recorded in Brooklyn (far way from the show’s home in the heart of Hollywood, California. During an extensive discussion, Jimmy Kimmel asked Murphy about his return to SNL and whether or not he’s been thinking about how to bring back some of his classic characters. After calling Murphy’s famous take on the claymation character Gumby “timeless,” Murphy confidently said, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do Gumby.”

If you’ve never seen Eddie Murphy’s hilarious take on Gumby, here you go:

Murphy also added, “I’m trying to figure out some reason to do Velvet Jones.” The character was famous for selling books, how-to videos, get-rich-quick schemes, educational brochures, and even starting a school of technology, all of which often being geared towards prostitutes. The character’s last appearance was in January of 1982, when it was announced by the character himself that he died of overexposure (which is pretty much the case with every popular recurring SNL character).

In addition, Murphy also name-dropped Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood, another favorite recurring character:

The best way for Mr. Robinson to return would be in the form of some kind of retrospective documentary in the vein of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. That might sound too easy, but there’s so many ways for a revival of Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood to go right, and surely Murphy and the writers at SNL can figure something out.

Then there’s also Murphy’s adult version of Buckwheat, the character from the Little Rascals with a unique way of speaking. That was a character request so often that Murphy came up with a way to get rid of him. In an extensive sketch in 1983 that seems to have been based on Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassination of John F. Kennedy, Buckwheat was assassinated by a character also played by Eddie Murphy. But in 1984, it was revealed that Buckwheat faked his death, and Murphy hopes to bring him back when he hosts again.

However, as Murphy notes, it’s hard to plan ahead for things like this with SNL. The show is written that week, and sometimes a good idea just can’t be cracked in a short amount of time. So Murphy can come with ideas, and surely some of the cast and writers have also thought about what they can do with him as a host, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll see all those characters. But we’re betting we’ll at least see a couple of them pop up during the episode. Stay tuned for that and all of our Saturday Night Live coverage and reviews.

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