In the original film, a light-hearted comedy, Murphy played Akeem Joffer, the prince of a fictional African nation who travels to the US to find a wife.
Though the original film featured an “all-Black cast”, said Murphy, it was not a movie about race.
In the forthcoming sequel, Coming 2 America, Murphy’s character returns to America to meet his estranged son, played by Jermaine Fowler.
“It’s like a fantasy, like a fairy tale. And that’s the legacy of the movie that it’s one of the few romantic fairytales with Black people.”