Well, let's see. There are so many bad Eddie Murphy moments that it's hard to pick just one. There was the time he walked out in the middle of the Oscars because he didn't win. And let's not forget a whole host of turkey movies.
Then Hollywood got totally p****d off when he pulled out of hosting the Oscars in 2011. Word is nobody wants to cast him anymore. His spin on that is pure Eddie Murphy BS, saying he is happy to just chill and not do much.
It started off so well for him, with a stellar stint on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. His movie hits were mega, including Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places and Coming to America. But by the 1990s, the problems had begun.
But if we have to pick just one moment, let's go back to May of 1997 to see when things started going very wrong for Eddie Murphy.
One Of The Biggest Hollywood Scandals Of All Time
Eddie Murphy was married to the gorgeous Nicole Mitchell Murphy when, on May 2, 1997, police pulled him over at 4:45 a.m. Seems he had just picked up a transexual working "girl" by the name of Atisone Seiuli (a.k.a. Shalimar). Seiuli had been born male but identified as female. It seems that the police were in the habit of keeping a close eye on the bit of Santa Monica Boulevard that was a well known pick up spot.
Hollywood loves a good bit of scandal. It was bad enough when two years before Hugh Grant had been caught in the act with a working girl named Divine Brown. But Eddie Murphy and a transsexual working girl? Could he be a closet gay? It was a huge scandal, probably one of the biggest Hollywood had seen in some time.
At the time, Murphy was hotter than hot in the movies with blockbuster hits such as Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places. Technically, he hadn't done anything wrong (yet) and so he wasn't arrested or charged with anything. He was spared the ignominy Hugh Grant endured when his mug shot was splashed all over the tabloids. But still, the scandal was huge.
Seiuli was hauled off to jail on an outstanding warrant.
The Good Samaritan Angle Nobody Believed
What happened afterward was bizarre, with Murphy and his PR team claiming he was just being a "Good Samaritan" and giving Seiuili a lift home. Murphy's spokesman actually said: “She asked him for a ride, and Eddie did so like he had helped people in the past.”
It only got worse, when even Saturday Night Live did a sketch about Eddie trying to "save" the poor transsexual. It was hilarious, but Eddie wasn't laughing.
An Interview Too Far
Instead of shutting up and riding out the storm, Murphy granted People magazine an interview. He brought Hollywood's go-to pitbull lawyer Marty Singer along for the ride.
The story he told is so bad it is funny. Yes, Nicole and his kids were away and he couldn't sleep, so he decided to go out to buy some magazines. Right.
Says Eddie: “I saw this Hawaiian-looking woman and said, ‘What are you doing out here?’ She said, ‘I’m working.' I said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that [soliciting].’ And bada-bing… I’m never giving anyone a lift again.” He swore up and down he thought she was a girl.
He should have shut up there and then, but he just kept talking: “What people don’t know is, for years and years at night I’d get in my car, I’d drive all over Manhattan, I’d give derelicts money... I’d go to corners where there are prostitutes and give them $5,000 and $10,000 to go home and get off the street. When I’m doing something charitable, I’m not doing it for publicity... It’s out of the goodness of my heart.”
Did anybody believe him? Nope.
The Beginning Of The End
The National Enquirer swooped down on Seiuli, paying her $15,000 bail. She was more than happy to talk. Seiuli talked of hundred dollar bills, chit chat about lingerie, and how "she" liked to do it. Seiuli claims to have told him she was up for anything and everything.
Then the nasty police intervened and that was the end of that. Only thing was, more trans working girls put their hands up and claimed to have done the dirties with the actor. He sued the National Enquirer for $5 million. Rather tellingly, he dropped the lawsuit against the tabloid and (worst of all) was ordered by the court to pay the paper's legal fees.
Seiuli died in mysterious circumstances a year or so later. She was supposedly writing a "tell-all" book. Hollywood wondered and speculated, but Eddie Murphy had the good sense (finally) to keep his mouth shut.
His career never fully recovered.