Eddie Murphy is 400-pound teacher in comedy film 'The Nutty Professor.'

Jet, June 17, 1996

Eddie Murphy sheds his naturally slim body and is transformed into a 400-pound college instructor in his latest comedy film, The Nutty Professor.

Murphy gets to show his naturally slim side as well since he plays a total of seven--yes, seven--characters in the update of the 1963 Jerry same name. Murphy's primary character is Professor Sherman Klump, a clumsy, forgetful but very lovable college chemistry professor. Klump, experimenting with mice, creates a potion that somehow makes obese individuals lose excess weight instantly.

Klump drinks the potion and becomes Buddy Love (a thin Murphy), a slender, cocky womanizer who women find irresistible. It is through Buddy Love that Sherman manages to come to life. Buddy is everything he is not. Buddy is cool, confident and handsome. Sherman, on the other hand, is the butt of more jokes than one can imagine. In one scene, the 400-pound professor bends over and a comic yells out, "You got more crack than Harlem."

Buddy Love, who exudes big-time confidence, can handle himself with the best. He can dish out dirt and insults in one second and moments later make women melt in his hands and arms. It is through the confidence he finds in Buddy that Sherman is able to pursue the campus' new chemistry professor Carla Purdy (Jada Pinkett). The only problem for Sherman/ Buddy is that the potion seems to have a mind of its own and wears off at the most inopportune times with disastrous, hilarious results.

The film also features Larry Miller (Pretty Woman, Undercouer Blues) as the school's volatile, money-hungry dean. Also starring is comedian David Chappelle (Robin Hood: Men in Tights) as the obnoxious entertainer Reggie Warrington. John Ales plays Jason, Professor Klump's sensitive, well-meaning assistant, who knows the whole story and hates Buddy Love.

Some of the characters who Murphy plays in the movie are so convincing that audiences might have a very tough time accepting that it's really him. He plays five members of Klump's family--three male and two female characters. One of the women is a super-feisty grandmother who is always ready for a fight. He also plays a White television fitness guru.

For some of the roles, Murphy told JET he had to spend up to seven hours getting made up. "For the Richard Simmons-type character, my makeup was from the ankles up. They shaved my legs and painted me. I had to shave my armpits, and they taped body hair on me. I'm glad nobody can tell it's me after all that," he said.

Murphy said the most important issue he wants fans to leave the theaters remembering is that it is not a put-down of obese individuals. "The issue that was most paramount going into this project was that the movie could not be a repudiation of people who were overweight. It couldn't just poke fun at people who're overweight. The scene where he goes on a date and the comic (David Chappelle) destroys him went from being a really funny scene to being touching and sad because that's what people do. Everybody's been in clubs where everyone started joking about one person. And that one person has to sit and kind of smile. This movie drags you into that and lets you know what that must feel like. You like Sherman by the time that happens."

The basic reason Murphy said he decided to remake the movie was because he wanted to do something that was just plain funny. "I've done action comedies, romantic comedies, political comedies, horror comedies. I just wanted to do straight comedy."

Few fans, he believes, will find much in common between his Nutty Professor and the Jerry Lewis original of 33 years ago. Their styles, he said, are totally different.

Murphy, in addition to defining the Professor, also chose Jada Pinkett for the Carla Purdy role. "Jada has the ability to give off a sweetness. Jada is just adorable. You just want to pick her up and hug her. And she's got this beautiful earthiness about her. And that's what we wanted to capture. If you watch any of her roles, Jada is fine, but her beauty is secondary. First you watch what she's doing and maybe half an hour later you think to yourself that she has a really pretty face."

Jada Pinkett was equally as complimentary of Murphy. "I thought my role was pretty ordinary," she said. "I never really prayed `The Girl.' I got paid to sit there and look at Eddie and learn a lot. And I had a ball. Eddie taught me a lot. He might not know it, but he did. My just watching him was a great lesson."

Some critics have called The Nutty Professor Murphy's last chance since his last three films were not blockbusters. And he's mystified by all of it. "I don't know where that perception--that this is Eddie's last chance--comes from. You know this July 9 I've been in show business 20 years. I've done TV, movies, live performances. The reality is there is no last chance for me. If a medium dries up for me, I'll go and do something else. I've never made a movie that didn't make money. They've made $2 billion off my movies."

The film's director, Tom Shadyac, who directed Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, said of Murphy's multiple characters: "What Eddie has achieved with all these characters is truly amazing. Eddie and Rick Baker (special effects makeup artist) have created something that has not been done before. With Sherman Klump, the make-up job is the real character--not like Mrs. Doubtfire or Tootsie where you know it's a make-up job. Sherman Klump is a real person. Eddie brought a voice and a physicality to the makeup and made Sherman Klump real."