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Jerry Seinfeld jokes Eddie Murphy isn’t ‘an innovator’ at awards show

Comedy legends Jerry Seinfeld and Eddie Murphy started their stand-up careers at nearly the exact same time and place.

“Eddie and I started off in stand-up comedy the same week at the same club in 1976,” Seinfeld recalled when honoring Murphy at the WSJ. Magazine 2019 Innovator Awards on Wednesday night at MoMA.

“Let me tell you what that’s like,” Seinfeld lamented. “It was like going to Smallville High, where Superman was born. And you’re on the football team with Clark [Kent] and you’re all playing, and then Clark starts doing things that the other players can’t do. He starts lifting up cars and running at super speed. And that’s why Eddie Murphy is not an ‘innovator’ — in the same way Moses was not an innovator of walking through the Red Sea. When Moses walked through the Red Sea, other people didn’t go, ‘Oh, I see how you do it.’”

Murphy — who was named the night’s Entertainment Innovator — arrived at the awards show directly from the set of his upcoming film, “Coming to America 2,” and said he was working on three hours of sleep.

Thanking Seinfeld, he quipped, “You are a mensch, Jerry. Mensch is a good thing, right?”

Also at the awards were Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Irina Shayk, Julianne Moore, Riccardo Tisci, Molly Ringwald, Bette Midler, photographer Cindy Sherman and WSJ. Magazine editor Kristina O’Neill and publisher Anthony Cenname.