When the long-awaited Upcoming 2 America the premiere on Amazon Prime Video on March 5, fans of the 1988 blockbuster comedy will be very excited to see how many famous faces return, from stars Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall to father figures James Earl Jones and John Amos. But there’s at least one thing viewers see will not see. Talk to The New York Times, Murphy and Hall reveal that one early draft of the screenplay had a MAGA-related joke that they cut from before filming.
The gag in question would have taken place in the Queens establishment which was the place for the funniest moments in the original film. After Prince Akeem (Murphy) moves from the fictional African country of Zamunda to New York City in search of a bride, he visits a nearby barber shop and meets his staff and customers, including the ever-controversial duo, Clarence and Saul – both of whom are also played by Murphy thanks to the make-up magic of Rick Baker.
Murphy will portray both characters again Upcoming 2 America, and an early version of the screenplay – written by the actor’s longtime collaborators, David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein, as well as Black-is creator Kenya Barris – would have exposed their surprising political tendencies. “There was a concept where the hairdressers wore MAGA hats and it turns out they were Republicans,” Murphy says. “But it was not because they were for Trump – they were Herman Cain supporters.”
Cain, of course, ran for the Republican nomination during the 2016 presidential election, and he briefly led the field before ending his campaign amid allegations of sexual harassment. He later co-chaired Black Voices for Trump during the former president’s re-election campaign and attended a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla, last summer. Not long after, he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and died in July of the complications. (The Trump campaign has since denied contracting the virus during the event.)
In the end, Murphy and his co-authors felt that Cain’s joke would not stand the test of time. “We thought it was funny, but it’s going out of the movie if we do,” he says. Times, adding that Baker’s makeup on the other hand remains timeless. (Baker, who retired in 2015, did not work directly on the sequel.) “We have aged them nicely,” he says. “They were supposed to be in the late ’80s, early’ 90s now. When I looked at the first one, I was amazed at how young we look – the skin is tight.”
Speaking of age, other fallen storylines from the early concepts of the screenplay include the cast of Tracy Morgan as the son of the current King Akeem. “I like Tracy and he’s the funniest man in the world,” Hall remarked. “But yo, Ed, you guys are about the same age!” (Morgan still appears in the film as the uncle of Akeem’s real son, played by Jermaine Fowler.) Murphy also says that he and the writers decided to deepen a scene with some fringe Zamunda goatherds. “[They] had a dispute over a goat, and it was very funny, but it turned out to be one of these guys [had sex with] this goat. It was like, uhhhh, we have James Earl Jones in this movie – let’s keep everything neat! ‘
Upcoming 2 America premieres on March 5 on Amazon Prime Video.
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: