Forty years after the first Beverly Hills Cop broke box office records as the highest-grossing film released in 1984, Judge Reinhold and John Ashton are back as Billy Rosewood and John Taggart! See their return in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which is now streaming 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.

“There’s a lot I want to do with Billy,” Reinhold told me. “I mean, he’s no longer young and naive. He’s a badass now. That doesn’t mean he acts like Clint Eastwood, he’s still an affable guy, but I want to see him take out some people. I want more, but Billy always wanted more, right?”

Ashton shared, “We developed the characters in the first one. Martin Brest gave us the freedom to run with it and develop our characters, and we grew and grew and grew and we became Taggart and Rosewood, and Axel, you know? Going back to this one was like a family reunion, we just fell right back into it.”

I had the opportunity to speak with the actors about how the action-comedy genre evolved since the start of the franchise, revisiting their characters, and ensuring the nostalgic moments were done just right.

Watch my interview below: