Eddie Murphy Revisits David Spade’s Infamous Diss That Sparked ‘SNL’ Feud in ‘Being Eddie’: “F–k Y’all, That’s What Y’all Think of Me?”

According to the Being Eddie documentary on Netflix, Eddie Murphy is totally over that time David Spade insulted him on Saturday Night Live. Mostly.

Directed by Angus Wall, Being Eddie—which began streaming on Netflix today—is, for the most part, your now-typical, uncritical documentary that presents a one-side tale of celebrated stardom. One of the few moments of “controversy” covered by the film is a rehash of that time Murphy got offended by an SNL joke.

As informed SNL fans know, Murphy—who was hired as a cast member in 1980, where he quickly rose to fame—held a grudge against his former employer for over 30 years, after Spade made a crack at the expense of Murphy’s career back in 1995, a decade after Murphy had left the sketch show.

Spade was well-known for roasting celebrities on his news desk segment “Hollywood Minute.” When Murphy’s 1995 horror comedy Vampires in Brooklyn bombed at the box office and with critics, Spade joked, “”Look children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish.”

The joke was met with shocked “Ooo’s” from the audience, something Murphy was quick to point out in this new 2025 documentary.

“The audience there boo and hissed him for saying it, right? I was hurt, my feelings was hurt,” Murphy said in the documentary. “I was like, ‘Yo I’m from the same-‘ It’s like your alma mater taking a shot at you—at my career, not how how funny I was. Called me a ‘falling star.’ If there was a joke like that right now, and it was about some other SNL cast member, and it was about how fucked up their career was, it would get shot down. The producers would look at it and say, ‘You’re not saying that joke.’”

Murphy continued, “The joke went through all of those channels that the joke has to go through, and then he was on the air saying ‘Catch a falling star.’ I wasn’t like, ‘Fuck David Spade’ I was like,‘Oh, fuck SNL. Fuck y’all, how y’all gonna do this shit? That’s what y’all think of me? You dirty mother-‘ That’s why I didn’t go back for years.”

Despite Murphy’s claims that he wasn’t mad at Spade personally, Spade revealed in his 2015 memoir that Murphy called him on the phone two days after the joke, and let him have it.

Spade recounted the phone call in his book, writing, “‘David Spade, who the fuck do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. Fuck. Going after ME?? You dumb motherfucker! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me. Talking shit about me??’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera . . . on and on and on and making me feel like shit.” Spade was told by mutual friends that Murphy hated him for years after.

Spade went on to say that while Murphy’s reaction crushed him, he came to see Murphy’s point of view eventually, and finally had a run-in with Murphy in 2011, where the two comedians reconciled.

Murphy finally decided to bury the hatchet with SNL—kind of—and return to the show as a host in 2019.

In the documentary, Murphy explains his decision. “I was like, ‘You know what? Fuck this. SNL is part of my history. I need to reconnect with that show, because that’s where I come from.’ That little friction that I had with SNL was 35 years ago. I don’t have no smoke with no David Spade. I don’t have any heat, or any of that, with nobody. I was like, ‘Hey let me go to and smooth that all out.’ And I did.”