Eddie Murphy Was Stealing Hubcaps & Close To Getting Fired His 1st Year With "SNL"

Ratings went through the roof when Eddie Murphy made his triumphant return to Saturday Night Live after 30 years away from the show. The series helped shape the comedian’s career into what it is today, and when he made his way back to the stage, Murphy revived some of his beloved SNL characters that have gone down in television history.

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He also sat down with the producers for Stories From the Show: An SNL Series where he chatted one-on-one about his hilarious history with the long-running program. Murphy admitted that for the first year he was on SNL, he was still living at home. After his first appearance, he was so excited that he didn’t even take his makeup off while riding public transportation back to his house. He thought that everyone would recognize him. “No one knew,” he said with a smile. “I probably looked like a very strange young fellow.”

Murphy said that everyone wanted to be on SNL and during his audition, he was told to make the talent coordinator laugh. “I did Muhammad Ali and I did Bill Cosby,” but Murphy failed to bring in even a chuckle. “A couple weeks later, they called me.” Both his Ali and Cosby impressions would make it to the small screen.

Although he took flack for being a new face within the cast, Eddie said he was just a 19-year-old happy to be on TV. “I would still steal,” he admitted, sharing a story of how someone stole his hubcaps off of his car, so he just stole someone else’s hubcaps to replace them. As popular as the show was, critics still weren’t feeling the new members, so the show’s head writer at the time fired everyone except for Murphy and one other person. The only reason the comedian was able to keep his job was that the head writer thought Murphy ate real dog food on the show. Murphy’s not that crazy; it was only hash.

Watch Murphy’s funny walk down Saturday Night Live memory lane below.