Eddie Murphy is the calorically-challenged Professor Sherman Klump.
Now Murphy is Buddy Love, Klumps slim & trim alter ego.
Nutty’s love interest is the bewildered Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett).
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The original version of The Nutty Professor debuted in 1963 and starred Jerry Lewis as a
geeky chemistry nerd who became the suave and sophisticated Buddy Love. Eddie Murphy
thought the remake should be a little different. Producer Brian Grazer recalls, "I bought
the rights to the film and the next day Eddie Murphy called to say that he had a great
twist for the movie and that we had to meet right away. His idea was to have Sherman
Klump be fat as opposed to the original character."
"I've always loved what Jerry Lewis did," Murphy says. "The thing about The Nutty Professor
is, Jerry Lewis was famous at the time for playing completely silly and extremely
outrageous characters, so when he pulled off the cool, sophisticated Buddy Love
performance -- well, it was quite a stretch for him and really impressive."
In all, Murphy plays seven different characters -- the Klump family, Buddy
Love and TV exercise guru Lance Perkins. "What Eddie and Rick achieved with all these
characters is truly amazing," relates director Tom Shadyac. "It's unique."
During the filming of the Klump family dinner scenes, Murphy would spend one full day in the
make-up of a particular Klump family member. The next day he would play another Klump family
member seated at the same dinner table having a conversation with the character he played
the day before. If all of this sounds complicated -- it was.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of all in the comedy was transforming Murphy
into Sherman Klump -- a 400 pound, middle-aged, painfully insecure college professor. This
extraordinary transformation required Murphy to endure four hours of extensive make-up,
designed by three-time Academy Award-winner Rick Baker. Baker created and sculpted
foam-rubber latex pieces, along with special wigs, and modeled a body suit of a 400-pound
man to help create Sherman Klump.
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