‘Coming 2 America’ Star Louie Anderson On Why Eddie Murphy Is One Of The All-Time Great American Actors

When it comes to Louie Anderson‘s career, it’s stand-up comedy that’s always been his predominant bread and butter, but over the course of the past five years, Anderson has been busy bulking up the number of acting credits on his filmography. Even better, he received some of the best reviews of his career for his work on FX’s Baskets, with his performance as Christine Baskets earning him an Emmy – plus two additional nominations – for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. More recently, he scored further praise for his five-episode arc on HBO Max’s Search Party.

Currently, Anderson is making the publicity rounds to talk up a much smaller role, but it’s one with so much nostalgia attached to it that’s hard not to get excited about it: he’s reprising his role as Maurice for Coming 2 America, the long, long, long-awaited sequel to the 1988 comedy classic Coming to America. Of course, Anderson’s hardly the only cast member from the original film to be stepping back into an old character: when Decider had a chance to chat with him, he talked about how much fun it was to hang out with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall again, how giddy he was to hear a bit from Eddie’s new stand-up material, and how much he enjoyed being able to channel – and pay tribute to – his mother on Baskets.

DECIDER: It’s good to talk to you again. I’m very much looking forward to seeing Coming 2 America, having been a huge fan of the original film. 

LOUIE ANDERSON: I just finished a three-hour interview with Eddie, Arsenio, John Amos, and me for Amazon. Which was amazing. I felt honored.

Given how long it’s been since the first film, before you got the call, would you have guessed that there’d ever be a sequel after this many years?

I always felt like there would be. I always thought, “Well, I always say I’ll never do something, and then I find myself doing those things again.” And I think Eddie is the kind of guy who can do it if it works out. When he did Dolemite Is My Name with Craig Brewer… Craig did an amazing job on Dolemite, and I think Eddie felt like he could trust him to do Coming 2 America. And then there was the amazing script that he got, and just in the bigger sense, the fact that everybody was still around. That’s really amazing. So that’s how I really thought about it: I think Craig was his missing piece of the puzzle, along with the very important centerpiece that was the script. 

On that note, I’m glad they brought in Kenya Barris to work on it. I’m a big fan of his work on black-ish.

Oh, yeah. And Eddie… The thing I was noticing while we were doing the interview, I was thinking, “This is one of our greatest American actors.” Not just comedy. I mean, did you see him in Mr. Church?

I did. And in Dreamgirls, too.

Yeah, and Dreamgirls, of course. But Mr. Church made me realize… I mean, I thought he should’ve gotten a nomination of some sort. And I brought it up to him when I was on the set. I said, “I loved Mr. Church,” and he goes, “Yeah, there was no money to get that thing made, but it was such a good script…” And that’s who Eddie is. That’s a beautiful movie about a lot of different things, and nobody would’ve thought that Eddie Murphy would do that movie, but he was completely comfortable in it, and it worked. And Dolemite, I think, was a big part of a thing you might do in your life… [Hesitates.] These are all just my thoughts. I think I know stuff, Will.

I understand completely. I’m guilty of that myself. 

[Laughs.] I’m just saying, I have my feeling about life and how you handle a career, and Rudy Ray Moore… Eddie honored him. I mean, for Rudy Ray Moore to get those movies made, that was an accomplishment, and for Eddie to do the job that he did on that movie… It was fantastic. And I think Eddie’s whole plan was to do Dolemite, to do Coming 2 America, and then go back out on tour. That’s my guess, anyway. 

I hope the tour really is forthcoming, because I know he’s been talking it up for awhile.

I was lucky enough to hear some of the material. He opened that door. He said, “I’ve been putting bits in my phone as I think of ’em,” and I begged him to do a couple of bits. And I can just tell you that the bit he did… He just did one, but oh, my God, it was the funniest thing. And I don’t dare say anything else, just because it’s not fair to him.

No, no, and I wouldn’t want it spoiled, either.

But you won’t believe how good that bit is. I mean, I’d been working on a new hour of comedy, and I just went, “Work harder, Louie!” [Laughs.] Before the pandemic, when we were shooting the movie, I said, “You know, if you want to warm up, you could open up some of my shows…” And he laughed. But Eddie and I go way back, to the days of the main room at the Comedy Store, and it was really good to see him. And Arsenio was great, and John Amos… You know, we’re sitting with a guy who broke all kinds of ground in TV.

Right, with Good Times.

Yeah, with Good Times, but…he did Roots, too, didn’t he?

Of course he did. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, so we had three hours of honest to God reminiscing and fun, and what we thought of the movie. I was lucky enough to be able to watch the movie – because I’ve got to watch it if I’m going to have these kinds of conversations with Eddie and them – and I sat afterwards and tried not to form any kind of opinion. I really let it sink in. I needed to have it sink in, because I’m watching it as a moviegoer, I’m watching it as a part of it, and I’m watching it as a human being that’s in show business and says, “Are people going to love this like I love it?” 

Now, I have a very small part in the film, as my character should, but I was amazed that they took such painstaking detail to make sure all the questions were answered and that all the loose ends were tied up, if not necessarily neatly. The interesting characters that they introduced to it worked, and there was some beautiful stuff that came out of that. And I came to the conclusion… I mean, I just figure that people who were fans of the first one, they’re going to be so happy. Because we talked about how, when you make a movie like that, you have to make sure you make a movie for those fans from all over the world that have been fans for…33 years? Is it 33 years? [Laughs.] Who can add? I can’t add.

Hey, don’t look at me. I’m a journalism major.

Yeah, and I’m glad that you’re working.

Ha! Me, too!

Because we really need journalists. Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that I was glad to see it, I felt very happy, and I loved the people they picked to be in the movie, to take the new parts to make the thing work and to carry it on. I mean, I really loved it. 

Believe me, I am psyched.

Now, when will you get to see it? Not for awhile? 

I haven’t heard a word about it, so…maybe not until everybody else does? I mean, I hope it’s sooner than that, but I don’t know. They’re playing it very close to the vest.

Well, I think it’s such a big thing that it’s a treasure that you own, and nobody wants to open it up for everyone to see right away.

And I do appreciate that.

And there’ll always be naysayers, no matter how the movie is. Now, when you watch it, you’re probably going to watch it on two levels, right?

I’m going to watch it as a movie, but when it comes down to it, I know I’m also just going to enjoy it as a reunion of sorts. With old cinematic friends, if you will.

Right! That’s exactly right. Oh, and during that interview, we were talking about Rick Baker and what a genius he is. Rick did a movie I was on that nobody saw called Ratboy.

I feel like maybe I have seen it, actually. Back when it was released on VHS.

It was with Sandra Locke. It was a Clint Eastwood production. Anyway, I was a terrible actor – and I still am at times! – but occasionally I hit a home run. And I was saying to Eddie that one of the things that he may not have experienced….or maybe he did, but I definitely experienced it. After I made Coming to America, because I was a celebrity, people would send cars for you. To make sure you show up. [Laughs.] That’s really why they send limos and town cars: because they want us to show up. That’s why I’ve always thought, anyway. I mean, it’s a nice gesture, but also, if they send a car, then they have us! 

But so many times in the car, especially when I’d go to New York, all of a sudden the guy would turn around and look at me and say, “Hey, man! You’re the fry guy, man!” “What?” “Coming to America!” “What?!” “That’s the movie that made me want to move to this country!” And I thought, “Wow. Wow, wow, wow.” I mean, that happened to me maybe ten times, where people whipped around…and sometimes they’d know the name of the character. “Oh! You’re Maurice!” And I go, “Holy shit!” [Laughs.] Because I felt the gravitas of it, you know?

I’ve always thought Coming to America changed moviemaking, at least in the way we do characters in movies. I also thought that the Barbershop movies came from that. And then wasn’t there also a barbershop TV show called Cutters? But, of course, there were lots of fun characters beyond the barbershop, too, like Sexual Chocolate. That movie… I mean, that’s one of the touchstone things of my career. If I’m asked questions, there are three or four things I’m asked about, and that’s always in the mix, no matter what, whether it’s by journalists, fans, my family… [Laughs.] And I only had a small scene! But Eddie liked stand-ups. Even in the new one, there’s a bunch of stand-ups in the cast.

I know both Tracy Morgan and Leslie Jones are in there. Of course, they’re SNL alumni, too, but I know they both do stand-up.

Yeah, and… I mean, nowadays, I don’t know all the standups that are out there. There are so many standups, it’s amazing, isn’t it? Standup comedy is alive and well out there! People say, “You grew up in the golden age of standup,” and I say, “Uh, I think now is the platinum age!” [Laughs.] There’s ten billion standups! But I do think a lot of them were spurred from us. “The HBO Babies,” I call them. The people who had HBO specials or were on Rodney [Dangerfield’s Young Comedians] specials. Anyway, I’m talking probably more than I should…

No, no, you’re fine. But if I could just jump back to Ratboy for a second… [Laughs.] I was wondering about just the experience in general, but I was also curious about the fact that, in addition to yourself, there were several other standups from that era in the cast of the film. John Witherspoon, Robert Townshend, Tim Thomerson, Bill Maher, and Jon Lovitz are all in the mix.

Well, it was a great experience any time I got to do something that was outside of the standup comfort zone. But I wasn’t very self-aware of my acting ability or lack of it or whatever. I always knew that if I didn’t do well, they probably just saw that they weren’t going to get what they needed from me. But for the most part, standups have to be coached with the acting. Robert, he seemed like a pretty natural actor. Tim…is a wild man. [Laughs.] He’s the wild man of Borneo! He was also in The Wrong Guys. There were a lot of stand-ups in that, too. In fact, Sam Kinison was supposed to play the bad guy, but they replaced him with John Goodman. But lemme tell ya, being in the woods with Richard Lewis and Richard Belzer… We should’ve just released all of the outtakes from that movie. It would’ve been hysterical. But it was a sweet movie. Danny Bilson and Paul de Meo really wrote a sweet screenplay, and it was really a fun experience. 

On more recent matters, I’m sure you were blown away by the amount of acclaim you received for your work on Baskets. Well-deserved, certainly, but the raves were just never-ending.

You know, it was such a great experience for me. It was such a fluke, but my life is full of flukes that turned out to be fantastic. That part, though… I always thought – and one of the conversations I’d had with my manager – that my dad character, that was really the character I couldn’t wait to play, but I ended up playing the really important person in my life, the person who had a sense of humor and who was really funny and who was the mother of eleven children. I really was a mama’s boy. I was her second-to-last child, and I used to go antiquing with my mom and all kinds of stuff. She would never leave us at home because she thought something would happen. She was very mother hen-ish. So when I got that part, I just made Louie Anderson disappear, and I took my mom, Ora Zella Anderson, and I jumped into that part with every single thing I had.

And it paid off.

Yeah! And it’s still a big part of my heart. I’m very fond of that character. 

It also gave you the opportunity to drift into some drama on occasion. Quirky drama, to be sure, but drama nonetheless.

I also loved the stuff I did on Search Party. Have you seen that yet? 

I have. It’s a great show.

I loved Search Party. I didn’t know how it would go over. I knew it was risky to do anything like that, especially after playing a character like Christine, but I didn’t play it like anything I’d ever played before. And Charles (Rogers) and Sarah (Violet Bliss), who are the directors and creators of that show, and all those actors, they opened their arms to me. I was scared to death that it was going to be horrible, but I got so many nice comments from it – and from a younger generation, especially – that really enjoyed it. And I also wrote a pilot with Mike Sikowitz, who wrote on Friends and created The McCarthys, and he writes on The Goldbergs. I pitched him a thing I was working on. As we were wrapping up Baskets, I said to the director, “Do you think I could play a cat?” [Laughs.]

I know, it’s a crazy question. But I said, “You know, because I don’t think I could play a human for awhile after playing Christine. So do you think I could play a talking house cat?”  And he said, “Yeah,” and so did the first A.D. So I pitched it. My brother had a really smart cat named Tigsley, and he could use the toilet, flush it, the whole thing, so I said, “What about if you play it like you’re part of the family, but you’re really a talking house cat?” And Mike loved the idea, so did Sony, so we wrote a pilot for Fox. We’re still waiting. But it’s a wonderful script, I love it, and…I’m really lucky. I mean, look at that! That’s an amazing thing that somebody would allow me to even present it! [Laughs.] So we hope they let us make a pilot. We’re hopeful. That’s all you can do in show business, right? You wait. And then I’m working on a couple of other things, including bringing Life with Louie back.

Nice!

Yeah, I’m really… [Takes a breath.] I’m the luckiest guy in the world, really. 

And you seem to be pretty darned beloved, too, which is a nice bonus.

Well, you know, you’ve got to give my mom the credit for that, because she always said, “Be nice to people, Louie, because you never know what kind of day they’ve had.”

That’s very true. It’s a very valid point. And I should know: I’ve got a mother who’s kind of like that, too. 

I mean, those moms really save people who might be egomaniacal…whether you’re a comic or a writer. [Laughs.] “Know-it-alls” is really the truth, isn’t it?

Well, when you spend your life being convinced how great you are by your mother… 

Is your mom still with you?

She is, thankfully.

Well, you tell her I said “hello.” Tell her that for me, just because you can.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

Watch Coming 2 America on Amazon Prime