At first, we just watch TV for a while as he sips from a Dr. His shoes are polished black leather, until he switches to sparkly black running shoes to bowl. This is Murphy’s first extended print interview in many years, so his wariness is understandable: He half-jokes that when he posed for his last magazine cover, they printed his smiling picture underneath the headline “Eddie Ain’t Shit.” He’s wearing a gray T-shirt with a LiveStrong logo on the front, black jeans, a diamond-studded watch and a diamond ring not much smaller than a golf ball. Just inside, pictures of his many children are arranged on a shelf, near a bar counter that holds various awards, as well as pictures of him with Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama – the president looks even more excited to be meeting Murphy than vice versa. When Murphy first emerges today, meeting me on a wicker couch facing a gigantic TV on a shaded veranda behind his house, he seems reserved, cautious, his eyes shielded by black-rimmed sunglasses. “So maybe it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t remember he was able to do that.'” His part as a street-smart petty thief in his latest movie, the Ratner-directed Tower Heist, is a similar affirmation – at an early screening, the audience roared when he simply said, “Shut up, bitch.” “I haven’t done a streety guy, working class, blue-collar character in ages,” Murphy says. It’s quickly clear that even at age 50, even after a long run of roles he describes as “family stuff, guys in suits with perfect hair,” Murphy’s delirious, essential Eddie-ness is intact. As he trounces me two rounds in a row (hitting 156 the second time), Murphy sings along loudly to the music, breaking into hip-shaking dance moves and unleashing his SNL-era impression of Brown’s signature “ Unh!” He throws his muscled arms up in exaggerated agony: “Asshole!” Cartoon versions of the pins pop up on the scorekeeping screens overhead, which he’s helpfully labeled EDDIE and BRIAN. Murphy’s ball veers to the side, leaving a couple of pins standing. Hanging in a corner, above an electric keyboard, is Ernie Barnes’ iconic painting Sugar Shack – as seen on the cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You and in the opening credits of Good Times. The motherfucker in question is a bowling ball, which is speeding down the center of one of the two polished lanes of the alley Murphy keeps here, along with an arcade full of video games and a blue-lit “club room,” inspired by a similar space in his new friend Brett Ratner’s house. “Come on, motherfucker,” Murphy shouts, over the throb of James Brown’s “Hot Pants” on a formidable sound system. Few people ever said it better – and down here in the basement of the stone-and-marble mansion he built on a Beverly Hills cliff, it’s coming from his lips often enough to make Shrek blush.

It’s a glorious thing, hearing Eddie Murphy say “fuck” again.

Eddie murphy raw drunk dad