It’s time to bow down to the Coming 2 America trailer.
Thirty-two years after Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall became movie royalty in Coming to America, Prince Akeem and his trusty friend Semmi reunite in the new look (watch above) at the long-awaited sequel.
Directed by Murphy’s Dolemite Is My Name collaborator Craig Brewer, Coming 2 America picks up as Akeem prepares to become king, only to learn that he long ago fathered a son (Jermaine Fowler) with a woman from Queens (Leslie Jones). Joining Fowler and Jones as newcomers to the series are KiKi Layne, Tracy Morgan, Rick Ross, and Wesley Snipes, while returning alums include Shari Headley, Paul Bates, John Amos, and James Earl Jones.
“It was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life, being able to watch them come back into these characters,” Brewer recently told EW of working with Murphy and Hall. “[Co-writer] Kenya Barris is one of the most powerful men in entertainment, and we’re sitting there on set and when Eddie and Arsenio walked into the barbershop as the old barbershop characters, we giggled like school children. [Laughs] We just dropped all sense of maturity and decorum. It was like, ‘Can you believe that we are doing this? Can you believe we’re at the barbershop? There’s Clarence [Murphy] for God’s sake!’ And it was just infectious. The crew grew up on Coming to America so they’re trying to be professional but they’re just trying to bite their cheeks so they don’t smile the whole time. And you’ve got to remember that Eddie and Arsenio haven’t done this in more than 30 years, and now they’re just cracking jokes and having a blast — and this is even after they’ve been in eight hours of makeup.”
Coming 2 America arrives March 5, 2021 on Amazon Prime Video.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
