His dad was the Nutty Professor. Her dad was Big Momma. And now they could be teaming up for their biggest blockbuster yet – a proper showbiz wedding.
Over the weekend Eric Murphy, the oldest of Eddie’s 10 children, announced his engagement to Jasmin Lawrence, the first of Martin Lawrence’s three kids; a slickly produced Instagram video features Eric dropping to one knee and popping the question in a candlelit room full of roses. “God truly blessed us with a love that feels like destiny,” read the caption. “We couldn’t be more excited for this chapter.”
The news comes three years after the couple went public with their relationship and heralds the prospect of two of the planet’s biggest stars becoming extended family. And as much as I would love to let the couple continue to celebrate their love as publicly as they wish, I’m gonna need their dads to step in and spin this made-for-Hollywood premise into a literal romcom. Had it been Liam Neeson and Gary Oldman’s kids getting hitched, I might let the matter lie.
But a Murphy-Lawrence romcom is just the comfort watch America needs right now.
In fact, Murphy and Lawrence have already shown themselves to be quite at home playing future in-laws. The last four years alone have seen Murphy marry off a son, a new prince of Zamunda, in Coming 2 America, and a daughter in You People – the romcom that broke Netflix viewers. Meanwhile, Detective Marcus Burnett – Lawrence’s alias in Bad Boys – has been browbeating his future son-in-law Reggie (Dennis Greene) as a running gag from the franchise’s very beginning. Actors talk a good game about striving for emotional truth – but none are as funny, or authentic, as Murphy and Lawrence when they’re letting their feelings flow.
Clearly, they didn’t arrange this union. “Whoever would’ve thought that my child and Eddie’s child would get together?” Lawrence told E! News in September. And the dads are already kidding around about who’s picking up the tab for the wedding. “I’m gonna try to get Eddie to pay for it,” Lawrence told Jimmy Kimmel.
“No no no no,” Murphy replied. “That’s not how it goes. My daughter [Bria] just got married. I had to pay … really had to pay – and you have to do the same, Martin. Don’t try to switch it up. Don’t try to change no shit. If it goes down, Martin is paying. And the wedding better be wonderful.” They’re not even trying to make a romcom and, already, they’re canning material for the trailer.
We are long overdue for a fresh Murphy-Lawrence collaboration. You’d think they’d have logged a bunch of screen time together in their five decades in the business. But as near as I can tell, they’ve only teamed up for two films. In the 1992 romcom Boomerang, about ad exec heartbreaker (Murphy) who meets his match (Halle Berry), Lawrence plays one of the buddies who cheers on the ad man’s philandering profligacy. Seven years later, Murphy and Lawrence came back around for Life, a dark period comedy in which the two of them play convicted bootleggers consigned to waste away in a Mississippi state pen.
And while the film remains a cult classic, not least because Murphy and Lawrence do so much of their scene work with other comedy and acting legends, it’s still pretty bleak. The film essentially winds down with them waiting for their turn to die, albeit while heavily made up to look like old men. “You die first, Imma sing at your funeral,” Murphy’s Ray tells Lawrence’s Claude. “I’m just gonna bust up in that motherfucker and go, ‘thee up-per rooom’!” No doubt, it’s a great scene – but, come on, we can’t let it end there.
A Murphy and Lawrence romcom has the potential to go in so many different directions. They could play it straight and simply tell the real story, or they could do a Romeo and Juliet-inspired fictionalization. (Picture Murphy and Lawrence as, say, rival funeral home directors who’d sooner die than mix families.) They could lean into the Hollywood blockbuster thing and make it a meta production (Murphy and Lawrence commit to their first film since Life, but it shoots at the same time as the wedding!), or scale down the production by playing virtually every character on screen. Given their eye-watering day rates and the industry’s penurious attitude toward non-comic book films, there might be just enough money left over for makeup and prosthetics.
The prospect of Murphy’s and Lawrence’s kids someday walking down the aisle has tantalized the actors’ loyal fans. If anything, the public’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic reaction to the nuptial news should tell the dads that their audience is definitely keen. “I want to go to this wedding so bad,” wrote one X user. Another said: “They have a chance to make the funniest human of all time.”
Romcoms have lost so much luster over the years. Each meet-cute runs into the next. Yes, the Murphy-Lawrence engagement is technically a nepo baby love story – but with fathers known for spinning solid gold out of far lesser material. For all we know, our best chance of seeing Murphy perform standup comedy again might be via a big-screen wedding toast.
At the very least, an “inspired by true events” wedding romcom could really help finance the real thing. And somewhere in that playful back and forth has to be two dads who, on some level, are seriously contemplating turning this too-good-to-be true engagement into an even grander spectacle. My advice? Let your kids’ words be a guide. This feels like destiny, too.
