Returning Beverly Hills Cop stars: “It was pretty much a family reunion”
Judge Reinhold and John Ashton spoke to RadioTimes.com about returning to the franchise for the legacy sequel.
Eddie Murphy is reprising one of his most iconic roles in the recently released Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, playing Detroit police lieutenant Axel Foley for the first time in three decades.
And Murphy isn't the only familiar face returning for the sequel, with Judge Reinhold and John Ashton back in their popular roles as Billy Rosewood and John Taggart from the original films, albeit in rather reduced roles compared to their previous appearances.
Ahead of the release on Netflix, that pair spoke to RadioTimes.com – and revealed that deciding to come back was not a difficult decision.
"Once we read the script, it was easy," Reinhold explained during an exclusive interview. "The new writer... Will Beall, was an ex LA detective and had a really great street sense about it.
"We wanted to use the first movie as a template [and] we were hoping to achieve that kind of success with it. And we both felt really good reading the script and what we were getting into, especially that Jerry Bruckheimer was back producing it. And that gave us a comfort zone."
Ashton added that he had a meeting with director Mark Molloy – who is making his feature debut – a month before production started, which reassured him he had definitely made the right choice to return.
"The first thing he said to me [was]: 'I want to bring it back to the '80s,'" he said. "And I went: 'Perfect, that's great.' And Jerry was involved and I knew Eddie was not going to do it unless the script was right. So I read the script and I said to Jerry, 'I'm in'. So I couldn't wait to go to work."
Read more:
- Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review – Eddie Murphy is electric in fun legacy sequel
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Speaking about working on the new film, Ashton said that it "felt like we never left" and continued: "We had developed our characters so well in the first one, that it was pretty easy for us to just fall right back into it."
And asked to pick out a highlight from the experience, both actors found it difficult to narrow it down.
"For me, it's just the three of us together again, the chemistry felt like we just picked up where we left off," said Reinhold. "I wanted more of it.”
"Yeah," agreed Ashton. "It was pretty much a family reunion."
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is streaming on Netflix from Wednesday 3rd July 2024 – sign up from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
