Eddie Murphy on the Action, Comedy, and Heart of ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’

Forty years after the first Beverly Hills Cop broke box office records as the highest-grossing film released in 1984, Eddie Murphy returns as the beloved Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. The movie premieres July 3 on Netflix.

Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.

“I love that on the surface it’s Beverly Hills Cop, but the movie is really about fixing this shitty relationship I have with my daughter and so many people are doing that with their kids. So I’m like, ‘Okay, this is gonna resonate with a bunch of people when they see what we’re going through,’ and that’s the stuff that makes the whole movie work,” he explained to me. “It’s like, why is Axel Foley driving a truck through somebody’s wall and why is he stealing the helicopter? Why is all of this crazy shit happening? It’s because he came to town to save his daughter and to fix the relationship with his daughter. This whole thing is about that and it just works.”

I had the honor of speaking with the actor about why the father-daughter relationship was the key to making this story work and how the action-comedy genre has evolved since the beginning of the franchise.

Watch my interview here: