![]() ![]() “Me, the experience of working and living at the time as an African American. And our convictions were predicated on the experience,” he remembers. “It was tooth and nail over what we felt was right. “That show was the closest depiction in reality to life as an African-American family living in those circumstances as it could be,” Amos says.īut Amos also remembers growing frustrated by the incongruity of the show’s white writers like Lear penning Black storylines he felt were inauthentic. (Detroit rapper Royce da 5’9” even confessed to being “raised by Gregory and James Evans” on “I Play Forever”). The show would become a cultural touchstone for a generation, especially for Black viewers: Alicia Keys, Rick Ross, the Wu-Tang Clan and many other artists have name-checked Amos or his character James Evans in their lyrics. In 1974, Amos was cast in the Norman Lear sitcom Good Times, in which he played the patriarch of one of the first two-parent Black households on network television. “I thought that somewhere, God is proving that he has a sense of humor,” he says. Amos had previously been a McDonald’s employee at one of their first Canadian outposts, so he gladly took on the commercial almost two decades later, he was thrilled to close the loop by playing McDonald’s rival Cleo McDowell in Coming to America. In 1971, Amos was asked to take part in a singing-and-dancing commercial for the growing burger chain McDonalds, which had only started selling the Big Mac nationally three years prior. “When I went back to work, I couldn’t finish the day because I kept belching every 30 seconds.” After about the third one, I turned into a human fountain,” he recalls. One time, a Pepsi commercial nearly cost him another acting job: “I broke away on my lunch hour and started drinking these 16-ounce Pepsis. To pay the bills, he took on many gigs in commercials. “You could go from being employed constantly at a handsome salary for a relatively long period of time and then may not work for five years,” he says. Despite the impressive accomplishment of reuniting so many original cast members, some characters are missing from the sequel.Even though Amos was sharing space with comedic legends, finding steady work wasn’t always easy. Hall and Murphy slap on the prosthetics to resurrect My-T-Sharp cut-ups Clarence, Morris, and Saul, as well as Hall's Reverend Brown and Murphy's Randy Watson. More importantly for fans, the sequel brings back a host of memorable characters with cast members from Coming to America reprising their roles: Amos as Cleo McDowell, Vanessa Bell Calloway as Imani Izzo (General Izzo's sister), Paul Bates as Oha, Garcelle Beauvais (former rose bearer turned priestess), and Louis Anderson as the long-suffering McDowell's employee, Maurice. ![]() Morgan Freeman, Trevor Noah, Gladys Knight, Colin Jost, Davido, En Vogue, and Salt-N-Pepa all make cameo appearances. Akeem's daughters Meeka, Tinashe, and Omma, are played by KiKi Layne, Akiley Love, and Bella Murphy (Eddie Murphy's real-life daughter). RELATED: Why Coming 2 America Took 33 Years To HappenĬoming 2 America infuses some new blood into the cast, including Leslie Jones as Mary Junson, Tracy Morgan as Uncle Reem, and Nonzamo Mbatha as Lavelle's love interest, Mirembe. Coming 2 America flips the script with Akeem grooming his son Lavelle Junson ( Jermaine Fowler) to take his place and forcing Lavelle into marrying Izzo's daughter Bopoto (Teyana Taylor). This news sends Semmi and Akeem back to America to track down the last and seemingly best hope to secure Zamunda's future. ![]() As King Jaffe (Jones) lays on his deathbed, he reveals that Akeem does indeed have a son: the product of a forgotten drug-induced tryst facilitated by Semmi (Hall) during their time in Queens. The future of Zamunda is uncertain as Akeem has no male heir, making the country vulnerable to an attack from General Izzo (Wesley Snipes) of Nexdoria. Coming 2 America, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video as one of its exclusive 2021 movie releases, picks up three decades after the fairytale wedding of Prince Akeem Joffer (Murphy) and Lisa McDowell (Headley), who now have three daughters. ![]()
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