‘Coming 2 America’: Arsenio Hall Felt a Huge Obligation to Get the Sequel Right After a Fan’s Tweet ‘Shook Him Up’
Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall are back for the highly anticipated Coming 2 America, and Hall said he felt especially obligated to deliver on fans’ expectations. The 1988 original film “means a lot to people,” he explained in an interview with Complex, pointing to a fan tweet that made him want to bring his best performance to the sequel.
Arsenio Hall realized fans had high expectations for ‘Coming 2 America’
The first trailer for Coming 2 America has fans plenty excited, as Murphy, Hall, and many original cast members and some new faces are on board.
During a Dec. 17 interview with Complex, Hall was asked if they had “any fear of not getting it right” and Hall pointed to something he read on Twitter that “shook” him. While he called the continuation of the story “really perfect and wonderful,” he shared the immense responsibility of meeting fans’ expectations.
“I’m a big social media nut. Eddie’s not so much into social media,” he said. “One day we’re sitting at his house, and I’m looking at something. I’m reading different stuff. I guess I said something like, ‘Wow.’ He said, ‘What?’”
Hall continued, “It was somebody tweeting saying, ‘Don’t y’all f*ck it up.’ I was like, ‘I never thought about it that way.’ … Here’s what I got out of the entire tweet: ‘That’s our movie. My daddy used to make us watch that once a year like The Wizard of Oz at the house. Don’t y’all f*ck it up.’”
Murphy advised him to put his phone down because of the impact the social media post had on him, but Hall shared how it really sparked the desire to “do it right.”
“I had never thought about the fact that it means a lot to people, and they put that in our arms and say, ‘Care for it and do it right, y’all,’” he explained. “That shook me up, but I’ll tell you what it did. It made me go read the script three more times in a row and say, ‘Let me get ready for this sh*t.’”
Arsenio Hall said ‘everybody brought their A-game’
Hall felt like everyone involved did the original justice with a sequel that’s going to give fans what they want.
“The one thing I’m proud about with this movie, the story is great, and the way it’s been threaded from the first is really masterful by Craig Brewer, and Kenya Barris, [Barry W.] Blaustein, and [David] Sheffield,” he said.
Hall added, “What I love most is we didn’t lose the main agenda, the humor. It’s a funny f*cking movie, and I’m proud that we hit all those bumps and checked all those boxes. It’s funny — it does everything you need it to do, but it’s also funny, and I think people will love the additions to it. There are some surprises here that will surprise people who don’t get surprised.”
As for his reaction to reading that fan’s opinion, Hall explained, “Basically, that tweet made me say, ‘Get ready, mother*cker. You got to do this.’”
“I wanted to put my foot in this one. Everything worked out good,” Hall noted. “Everybody brought their A-game every day, giving 100 percent, on time. When you see the outtakes, you’ll realize how much fun we had. You’ll watch the outtakes and say, ‘They shouldn’t have even paid them, because they had too much fun. That’s not no job.’”
