Arsenio Hall’s dreams of having triplets were dashed by Eddie Murphy – after the actor got into a fight on the set of “Coming to America.”
In “Arsenio: A Memoir,” the former talk show host, now 70, writes that while shooting the 1988 comedy, he was gifted with “bad New York weed” and invited two women to dinner and a private party at his Waldorf Astoria property.
“I’ve been wanting to have a ménage-à-trois for a long time,” she writes. “It’s the most expensive on my bucket list, maybe in the top three, and it’s just a night out.” I am about to fulfill my dream.”
Hall says her days were “playing on the couch and being turned on,” when the phone rang.
He reluctantly answered it to find Paramount Pictures president Ned Tanen on the other end, yelling that “Coming to America” was out.
Tanen angrily claimed that Murphy “choked” the film’s director, John Landis, “on Queens Boulevard, in front of the whole crowd,” leading him to “if-king quit.”
Hall noted an “uncomfortable vibe” between Murphy and Landis, calling the dynamic between them “awful.” The two previously worked together in 1983’s “Trading Places.”
Eager to save the day, she canceled her party plans and immediately took a car to Murphy’s Englewood, NJ estate, Bubble Hill. Although Murphy usually didn’t eat, he decided the time was right.
The two started dropping screws and Hall pulled out his bag of weed – another thing Murphy never did. But Hall persisted and taught the “48 Hours” star how to inhale and exhale.
“We drink and we smoke and we’re high as f–ka,” she writes.
The next day, Hall returned to the Waldorf and received another call informing him that “Landis is back at work, he and Eddie met, agreed to a deal, or agreed, or – I never found out what happened that afternoon on Queens Boulevard.”
While promoting the film, Murphy was asked if he would work with Landis again, to which he replied, “Vic Morrow has a better chance of working with Landis than I do” — referring to the actor who died in a tragic accident while Landis was filming 1983’s “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”
However, Landis and Murphy reunited in “Beverly Hills Cop III” in 1994.
