Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby have never really seen eye to eye. The feud between the two comedy giants can be traced back, publicly at least, to a bit from Murphy’s 1987 stand-up special, Eddie Murphy: Raw. If the bit is to be taken at face value, Cosby once called up Murphy to scold him for cursing in his act. According to Murphy, the call angered him so much that he reached out to Richard Pryor, who encouraged him to do whatever makes the people laugh, and supposedly suggested that Cosby “have a Coke and a smile and shut the f— up” (a reference to Cosby’s famous Coca-Cola commercials from the 1980s). You can check out the bit in its entirety right here:
Cosby later called Murphy a “nasty liar” and said that the reason he called him was because he’d heard Murphy was going around bragging about the amount of money he made. Cosby felt that it was arrogant behavior and didn’t think he should be acting that way. He also said that Murphy’s story about Pryor wasn’t true. If Cosby is to be believed, Pryor called him up after Murphy’s special came out to assure him he never said any of the things Murphy said he did.
Tensions seemed to simmer in 2015 when Murphy refused to mock Cosby in a sketch from the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. Cosby later thanked him, saying that he was “very appreciative” of Murphy, and he applauded his actions. The peace between them would be short-lived, though, because when Murphy hosted SNL in 2019, he joked, “If you had told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring stay-at-home, you know, house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would have taken that bet.” Cosby’s publicist fired back, calling Murphy a “Hollywood slave.”
But Murphy and Cosby appeared to be on friendlier terms decades earlier when they met for the first time at a charity softball game. A couple of years after Eddie Murphy: Raw, the comedians faced off at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Murphy was on the “Harlem Nights” team along with Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx, while Cosby was on the “Ghost Dad” team, which also included Sidney Poitier and a young Sinbad. The teams were, of course, named for Murphy and Cosby’s upcoming movies at the time.
Several pictures exist from the event, but Cosby looked more interested in clowning around with Pryor than in interacting with Murphy. One photographer did manage to get a shot of Murphy and Cosby shaking hands. According to reports, things didn’t turn out to be all that exciting otherwise. The game didn’t even make it to seven innings before getting called “on account of boredom.”
Murphy and Cosby, along with Pryor, would be photographed together again the following year, backstage at the Sammy Davis, Jr. 60th Anniversary Celebration. Interestingly enough, Murphy did a Cosby impression during that same show. However, Cosby’s reaction was not recorded.
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