In our 100th episode, HFPA journalist Barbara de Oliveira Pinto sat down with Hollywood legend Eddie Murphy. He is producing and starring in a Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name. He plays comedian, musician, actor, and filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore in 1970s Los Angeles. “I was a big fan of Rudy Ray Moore’s movies. I got the idea about 15 years ago that his story is kind of Ed Wood-sy. When I heard of how he made his movies I started looking at him a whole different way. This guy was really a guerilla filmmaker, he couldn’t get in, he had to go in the back door and he had to finance his movies himself and he had to go literally put microphones up in his house and record his albums in his living room.”

The message of the movie is that you can do whatever you want to do. “All you have to do is really believe in it. No matter what it is in life if you want it and you can see it you can make it happen even if nobody else can see it, even if you have none of the talents for what you want to do.”

Murphy has believed in himself since he was a teenager. But he also believes that luck played a part in his success. “I think luck is a big giant part of it. Absolutely, because there’s so many talented people. The odds of being in the right place at the right time, there is nowhere where you go to learn that so if you find yourself in the right place at the right time more than once, that’s luck. The things that happened for me and the way doors opened up for me, that was a super lucky break. I’m the only actor on earth that can say I’ve only had one audition.”

He is also thankful for his good memory. When he is on the set he can turn the character on and off. “I always say I’m not a method actor but that’s my method: I turn it on and off. I don’t study scenes, I don’t rehearse. I don’t even look at the script until we get on the set.’

Listen to the podcast and hear what kind of childhood he had in New York; what makes him laugh; when he knew he was going to be a star; whether he was popular in high school; how he got a job on Saturday Night Live48 Hours