Eddie Murphy once told a nine-year-old Noah Wyle to get lost over an autograph request, and that rejection later turned into a birthday present. Celebrity encounters rarely go as planned, especially when a starstruck kid meets a comedy legend at the peak of his powers. Decades passed, a family grew, and one clever child decided that an old sting deserved a proper ending. Wyle later shared the tale with a delighted audience.

While most childhood autograph stories end with a smiling kid and a signed napkin, this one took a funnier route.

Eddie Murphy answered the request with an expletive, and Noah Wyle later received a forged autograph as a birthday gift. The nine-year-old had praised Murphy’s Saturday Night Live work, only to be asked why he was awake so late.

“I met Eddie once when I was a kid. I asked him for his autograph," Wyle recalled on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast.

He added, “I said, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ He goes, ‘F*** off, man.’”

On Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Wyle revealed that his ten-year-old daughter printed a picture of Murphy and wrote a note calling her father a great kid, signed in Murphy’s name with a misspelled Eddie. She claimed that she and her mother had met Murphy the day before and secured the autograph her father wanted. Wyle framed the gift and keeps it in his office. Poehler loved the story, while Wyle now signs instantly whenever a nine-year-old asks.

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While Wyle admires a fake signature at home, Murphy is busy preparing a very real return to the small screen.

Eddie Murphy is expected to star in The Chairman, a drama series from Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men. The project is in development at Peacock, according to Deadline, and it would mark Murphy’s first live-action role in a scripted series. His earlier television credits were voice work, including Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs. Plot details remain under wraps, so speculation is the only snack on the table.

Universal Television and 101 Studios, co-founded by David Glasser, will produce the series, which marks the first project from Chris McCarthy and 101 Studios after their NBCUniversal deal. Murphy and Weiner will both executive produce. Weiner is a nine-time Emmy winner who ran Mad Men for seven seasons, wrote for The Sopranos, and saw his last series, The Romanoffs, reach Amazon in 2018. Meanwhile, Noah Wyle still owns the one Murphy autograph nobody can dispute, even if his daughter signed it.

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What are your thoughts on the fake Eddie Murphy autograph gifted to Noah Wyle? Let us know in the comments.