Sidney Poitier Told Eddie Murphy to Turn Down One Dramatic Movie Role: ‘You Are Not Denzel, and You Are Not Morgan’

Eddie Murphy made his mark on Hollywood by being not just funny but by being downright hilarious — as one of the first Black regular performers on Saturday Night Live and in '80s box-office hits like 48 Hours, Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop.

Although he scored his lone Oscar nomination — in the best supporting actor category — for a dramatic role in the 2006 movie musical Dreamgirls, he's mostly stuck to comedy. As Murphy, 63, reveals in the new two-episode Apple TV+ documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, he was advised by none other than Oscar-winning Hollywood legend Sidney Poitier to do just that (and let Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman handle the dramatic heavy lifting).

"Early on, Sidney said — I don’t know if it was an insult or a compliment, or something," he begins. "It was like… They were talking about doing Malcolm X. Norman Jewison was putting it together, and they were gonna use The Autobiography of Malcolm X by [Roots author] Alex Haley. And they approached me about playing Alex Haley."

Murphy continues: "And some-kind-of-where around that same time, I bumped into Sidney Poitier at something. And I asked him, ‘Yeah, I’m thinking about playing Alex Haley.’ And Sidney Poitier said [imitating Poitier's Bahamian accent], uh, ‘You are not Denzel, and you are not Morgan. You are a breath of fresh air. And don’t f--- with that.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ "

Haley had previously been played by James Earl Jones in the groundbreaking 1977 TV miniseries Roots and its 1979 sequel Roots: The Next Generations, so Murphy would have been in highly esteemed company. But apparently, he took Poitier's advice and declined the role.

In the documentary, Murphy also recalls tips he received from Marlon Brando, former heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes ("Don't forget where you came from") and Godfather of Soul James Brown. (Murphy parodied Brown on SNL, and his Dreamgirls character, James Early, was said to have been loosely based on Brown.)

"And James Brown told me, he asked me, he told me I should stop cursing. He said [imitating Brown's raspy voice], 'You want to be in this business for a long time, you should stop that cursing.' And he said, 'You think you got a million dollars?' I said, 'Yeah, I do.' And he said, 'You ain't got no million dollars.' He said, 'If you do got a millions dollars, you take it and bury it in the woods.' "

"And I said, 'Why bury my money in the woods?' " Murphy continues. "He said, 'The government will take it from you. So bury it.' And I said, 'But can't the government take your land?' And he said, 'But they won't know where the money is.' That's a true story. That's the kind of advice I used to get."

Murphy goes on to say that the "elders" had trouble giving him useful advice because Hollywood hadn't previously seen a young, successful Black man barely out of his teens. "I was in uncharted waters," he says. "For Sidney and all those guys, when I showed up, it was something kind of new. They didn't have a reference for me."

Along with Murphy, other stars interviewed for the documentary — which devotes one episode to "Black Leading Men in Hollywood" and one to "Black Leading Women in Hollywood" — include Washington, Freeman, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg.

Number One on the Call Sheet premieres March 28 on Apple TV+.