Beverly Hills Cop 4 star Eddie Murphy recalls the “cheap shot” joke made at his expense by SNL‘s David Spade, saying the experience “hurt his feelings.”

Murphy famously stayed away from SNL for decades after leaving the show to pursue a movie career, and in a recent New York Times interview, he talked about the “cheap shot” Vampire in Brooklyn joke that contributed to his estrangement from the long-running late-night sketch comedy show. Check out his remarks below:

When David Spade said that [expletive] about my career on SNL, it was like: “Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re [expletive] with me like that?” It hurt my feelings like that, yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. One movie. “Vampire in Brooklyn.” It came out and had flopped. He showed a picture of me, and he said, “Hey, everybody, catch a falling star.” It was like: Wait, hold on. This is “Saturday Night Live.” I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show. The show would have been off the air if I didn’t go back on the show, and now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career?

And I know that he can’t just say that. A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career. Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal. It was like, “Yo, how could you do that?” My career? Really? A joke about my career? So I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought — I felt it was racist. Thirty years [I stayed away from the show]. In the long run, it’s all good. Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to SNL. I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.

More to come…