Cosby Rep Calls Eddie Murphy a 'Slave'

He attacks comedian over 'disparaging' SNL jokes
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 23, 2019 2:50 AM CST
Updated Dec 23, 2019 6:11 AM CST
Cosby Spokesman Calls Eddie Murphy a 'Slave'
In this Sept. 25, 2018photo, Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown Pa.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Bill Cosby is serving time in a Pennsylvania prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, so it's not clear whether he saw Eddie Murphy's return to Saturday Night Live—but his spokesman certainly wasn't happy. In an Instagram post, Andrew Wyatt slammed Murphy as a "Hollywood Slave" over "disparaging" jokes the comedian made about Cosby, CNN reports. In his monologue, Murphy joked about how their situations had changed. "If you would have 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 have took that bet," he said. He imitated Cosby's Cliff Huxtable character and asked: "Who's America's Dad now?"

In his statement, Wyatt credited Cosby with breaking "color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy ... could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come." He added: "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." He called for a "meeting of the minds" to "discuss how we can use our collective platforms to enhance Black people rather than bringing all of us down together." The Hollywood Reporter notes Murphy has criticized Cosby in the past: In his 1987 special Raw, the comedian complained that Cosby had called him up, without ever having met him, to chastise him for "being too dirty on the stage." (Murphy declined to play Cosby in SNL's 40th anniversary special.)

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