After steadily building a career in standup comedy, Wayans scored his first movie role in 1984, making a brief appearance in Beverly Hills Cop as a hotel employee selling bananas. The scene put him face-to-face with Eddie Murphy, the SNL star who was in the midst of a meteoric rise in Hollywood. A year later, Wayans joined the Saturday Night Live cast for Season 11, the show’s first following Murphy’s departure. Though the two African American comedians had very different styles, the optics were hard to ignore: To most at home, Wayans was brought on as Murphy’s replacement. Aware of how this looked,