Eddie Murphy Is Bringing Eddie Murphy Back

Wearing a plush zip-up jacket with sunglasses hanging off the front, Murphy leaned back and shifted from a cool monotone to a comic impression of himself watching “Raw” as a snooty prude. “That’s a bit much, my goodness,” he said, cracking up, then shifting again, taking his voice down an octave to register a hint of moral disapproval: “My word.”

With alacrity he returned to the measured voice of Eddie Murphy, unflappable superstar, recognizing that what is a portrait of a place and time for him means something altogether different to everyone else. “It’s forever,” he said quietly in what might be considered a verbal shrug.

Murphy describes himself now as a completely different person than he was back then, but spending an hour with him argues otherwise. He remains blindingly quick on his feet and an ingenious, hilarious mimic who can summon a big top of characters in seconds. With a soft voice and laid-back manner, he can seem remote, until he switches into a character, which he does often; raising his volume and intensity, he commits, firmly in the moment.

As is clear from his performance in “Dolemite,” one of his finest, Murphy’s star power is undiminished. But there’s a new tenderness and mature vulnerability in this role that also comes out in person. Asked how his sense of humor has changed, he conceded: “I’m mushier than I used to be.”

His new movie provides some evidence. Murphy — who came up with the idea, and the title, for the blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” which Keenen Ivory Wayans eventually directed in 1988 — takes a much warmer, more reverent approach to Rudy Ray Moore, a star of the blaxploitation era. “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s affectionate 1994 portrait of a B-movie auteur, was an inspiration. (They even hired the same screenwriters, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski).