Murphy was only given the secondary role to spite Levy, at least in his opinion.ĭoumanian, however, wants a little more credit for Murphy’s casting. Ultimately, Townsend didn’t sign his contract, and Doumanian agreed to put Murphy on the show - but only as that season’s one-and-only featured player. (There must have been an unwritten SNL rule about having only one Black guy on the show at that time?) Even though he thought Townsend was great, Levy “blew a gasket,” threatening to quit the show unless Murphy was cast. But Doumanian had already decided on Robert ( Hollywood Shuffle) Townsend and wanted to stick with him. Levy arranged for Doumanian to see Murphy, who was even better in his formal audition. After getting Michaels’ blessing, Levy agreed. (Anyone who has a copy of that pilot script can hit me up on Twitter.) When Michaels left the show after Season Five, new producer Jean Doumanian called and asked Levy to return. (For what it’s worth, he was also Lorne Michaels’ cousin.) He’d actually left the show after the first few seasons to work on a sitcom pilot with Chevy Chase about a rich guy serving time for white-collar crime in a minimum-security prison. Levy wore plenty of SNL hats throughout the show’s early years, appearing as extra, concocting sketches as a writer and working as a talent coordinator. That’s what Eddie Murphy used to work the pay phone from which he hounded SNL talent coordinator Neil Levy with a series of funny jokes, stories and outright lies, according to a tale Levy recently told on SNL Stories, a podcast from The Saturday Night Network. At least in the early 1980s, the key to getting cast on Saturday Night Live was the right phone number and a pocketful of quarters.
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