Eddie Murphy Shares What Robin Williams Told Him Minutes Before His Bold Oscars Speech
Eddie Murphy says Robin Williams urged him to ditch his planned remarks moments before they presented at the 1988 Oscars—right before Murphy went on to blast the Academy for overlooking Black artists.
Eddie Murphy just dug up a sharp little Oscars memory: right before his 1988 speech calling out the Academy for sidelining Black artists, Robin Williams pulled him aside backstage and basically asked if he really wanted to go there. Not because it would ruffle feathers, but because he was worried about the joke landing. That tiny distinction says a lot.
The backstage moment
Murphy was talking to Entertainment Weekly while promoting his new documentary, 'Being Eddie,' when he revisited that night. He says he had a speech ready, Williams heard what he planned to say, and offered a nudge to rethink it.
'But why go there?'
According to Murphy, Williams was not clutching pearls about controversy. He was asking the comedian-to-comedian question: Is this actually funny? Murphy’s answer, essentially, was yes — he wanted humor with an edge, and he wanted to make a point while he had the mic.
What Murphy said onstage
Williams did not talk him out of it. Murphy went out and delivered his remarks before announcing Best Picture — which wound up going to The Last Emperor — and he did not sugarcoat his gripe with the Academy. He told the room he had initially turned down the invite to present (passed to him through his reps) because the Oscars had a long history of failing to recognize Black achievement in film. Then he spelled out the receipts to that point in the Academy’s 60-year history:
- Hattie McDaniel
- Sidney Poitier
- Louis Gossett Jr.
Murphy joked that the speech probably cost him any future Oscar love, then twisted the knife with a timeline gag: about every 20 years a Black performer wins, so maybe 2004 would be the next window — by then, he figured, this would all be forgotten. He closed by saying what he wanted was simple: for Black artists to be acknowledged, and for Black people to stop riding the caboose of society and bringing up the rear. It was blunt, pointed, and yes, a joke with teeth.
How he looks at it now
Murphy, who has an Emmy, told EW he did not think about the fallout back then. He was trying to be funny while saying something that mattered. That tracks — the whole story plays like a very specific, very showbiz moment: two giants backstage, one asking if the bit works, the other deciding to swing anyway.