Murphy, doing an impression of Cosby, then asked the audience, “Who is America’s dad now?”
Eddie Murphy’s revenge 32 years after Cosby slammed him was brutal 😂😂😂
— Ken Barnes (@kenjbarnes1) December 23, 2019
“If you had told me 30 years ago that I’d be this boring, stay-at-home house dad, and Bill Cosby would be in jail ...even I would have took that bet. <Cosby voice> Who is America’s Dad now?!” #EddieOnSNL pic.twitter.com/vVf4LOrSvd
Andrew Wyatt, Cosby's publicist, called out Murphy on Cosby's Instagram page, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in 'I Spy' and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come," Wyatt wrote. "It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to 'SNL' and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave."
Wyatt added that Murphy’s comments, "helps you embark on just becoming clickbait.”
Murphy and Cosby have clashed before, according to CBS News. Murphy said Cosby called him during the 1980s to complain about his language and raunchy humor during his comedy acts.
“I’ve been a big fan of Bill Cosby all my life. Never met the man before, but he called me up about a year ago and chastised me on the phone for being too dirty on stage,” Murphy said in his 1987 “Raw” special. “And it was real weird because I had never met him and he just thought he should call me up, because he’s Bill, and he should tell me what comedy is all about.”
Murphy also reportedly refused to play Cosby on 'SNL's' 40th anniversary special in 2015, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"It's horrible," Murphy told The Washington Post in 2015. "There's nothing funny about it. If you get up there and you crack jokes about him, you're just hurting people. You're hurting him. You're hurting his accusers. I was like, 'Hey, I'm coming back to SNL for the anniversary, I'm not turning my moment on the show into this other thing.'"