Trivia / Coming to America

• Acting for Two: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. Technically, both are Acting For Four.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget $36 million. Box office $288.8 million^note And according to various sources, could go as far as 350 million. Yes, you are reading this right - Paramount claims to this very day this film didn't turn profit, despite a lawsuit against the claim. Should that lawsuit end up in any other way than outside-the-court settlement, it could potentially put an end to Hollywood Accounting.
• Cast the Runner-Up: James Earl Jones was initially interested in playing Cleo, but the creators wanted him to play King Jaffe and managed to persuade him to accept that role instead.
• Dawson Casting: The movie opens on Prince Akeem's 21st birthday. Eddie Murphy, who played the prince, was actually 27 at the time.
• Deleted Scene: Cuba Gooding Jr. shot a scene in which his character (Boy Getting Haircut) tells Clarence that he does not have money to pay for his haircut. Clarence responds by cutting a big chunk out of the boy's hair. But to Gooding's disappointment, the scene was deleted.
• Executive Meddling: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall claim that Paramount pressured them into including a white cast member, so Murphy and Hall decided on Louie Anderson, in order to avoid an all-black cast.
• Fake Nationality: Among Eddie Murphy's roles is the Jewish Saul. This was John Landis' idea as a sort of payback for Jewish comedians wearing blackface in the early 1900s.
• He Also Did: The tribal dance that accompanies Imani's introduction was choreographed by Paula Abdul. It's also a high-tempo rendition of the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (also directed by John Landis).
• Hostility on the Set: While Eddie Murphy and John Landis worked together well on Trading Places, here they had a clash of personalities, though they did work together again on Beverly Hills Cop III. Landis recalled:
  The guy on Trading Places was young and full of energy and curious and funny and fresh and great. The guy on Coming to America was the pig of the world... But I still think he's wonderful in the movie."
  • In a Playboy interview, Murphy claimed that they almost came to blows:
  We had a tussling confrontation...We didn't come to blows. Personalities didn't mesh. I grabbed him, and he thought I was playing. So he tried to grab my balls and I pushed him away. But I wasn't kidding. He was doing some silly shit that made me mad. He directed me in Trading Places when I was just starting out as a kid, but he was still treating me like a kid five years later during Coming to America. And I hired him to direct the movie! I was gonna direct Coming to America myself, but I knew that Landis had just done three fucked-up pictures in a row and that his career was hanging by a thread after the Twilight Zone trial. I figured the guy was nice to me when I did Trading Places, so I'd give him a shot...I was going out of my way to help this guy, and he fucked me over. Now he's got a hit picture on his resumé, a movie that made over $200 million, as opposed to him coming off a couple of fucked-up movies – which is where I'd rather see him be right now (laughs).
• Missing Trailer Scene: There was a scene featured in the theatrical trailer that was cut from the final film. In it, Cleo McDowell, Akeem, and Semmi walk into Cleo's office, where he asks if either of them have had any fast food work experience. Semmi responds "Certainly not!" Akeem then nudges Semmi, and tells Cleo that this is their first job in the United States.
• Playing Against Type: Eddie Murphy, famous for his fast-talking, Street Smart characters, instead plays a kind, friendly Naïve Newcomer.
• Reality Subtext: The story is largely based Eddie Murphy's frustrations with dating women that were more interested in being with a celebrity than getting to know him as a person.
• Recycled: The Series: A television pilot of a weekly sitcom version of the film was produced for CBS, following the film's success, starring Tommy Davidson as Prince Tariq, and Paul Bates reprising his role as Oha. The pilot went unsold, but was televised on July 4, 1989 as part of the CBS Summer Playhouse pilot anthology series.
• Technology Marches On: If mobile phones were more widespread at the time, Semmi might have texted Akeem that his parents, the King and Queen, are in New York, and he's gone with them to the Waldorf Astoria.
• Throw It In!: Cleo gets interrupted by Darryl three times. On the third time, Cleo accidentally stumbles on the stairs. John Amos actually tripped during this take, and it was kept in.
• Trend Killer: This film is often credited for having killed off the Jheri Curl hairstyle due to the unflattering "Soul-Glo" parody.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sidney Poitier was considered for King Jaffe Joffer.
  • Vanessa Williams was originally considered for the role of Lisa McDowell.
  • In addition to Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy reprising their roles from Trading Places, Paul Gleason was supposed to appear as Clarence Beeks, but he was busy filming Die Hard.
• Word of Saint Paul: Samuel L. Jackson revealed in his Masterclass that he played his armed robber character as a Justified Criminal who's robbing the store to support his girlfriend and child.
• Working Title: The Quest.

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