How Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall were de-aged in ‘Coming 2 America’

• Warning: Spoilers below if you haven’t seen “Coming 2 America.”
• Brewer said the de-aging scenes was the thing he was most nervous about doing in the movie.
• “But I think we pulled it off,” he told Insider.
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

No, you weren’t seeing things. There is a scene in “Coming 2 America” where technology is used to make Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall look younger.

In the flashback where Akeem (Eddie Murphy) and Semmi (Arsenio Hall) think back on their time in Queens, New York looking for a wife for Akeem thirty-plus years ago, we are taken back to that memorable scene in the first movie when the two go to a club and meet all kinds of different women, including Hall, dressed as a woman, hitting on them. It leads to Hall, as Semmi, spitting out his drink.

But to the surprise of fans of the original, that scene suddenly continues in “Coming 2 America” and we see Semmi walking to the bar where he encounters Mary (Leslie Jones). Semmi and Akeem end up at Mary’s apartment where Akeem has sex with her.

The flashback ends and Akeem, now King of Zamunda, realizes he has a son back in Queens.

In the continuation of the club scene and the scene in Mary’s apartment, Murphy and Hall are both de-aged so they look like they did back when the first movie came out in 1988, “Coming 2 America” director Craig Brewer confirmed to Insider.

"When we were discussing how are we going to do this flashback sequence, I had the idea that we should start it right at the moment when Arsenio does the spit gag opposite himself playing the woman," Brewer said. "I wanted people to think, maybe this scene happened in the first movie but they just didn't use it."

"So they spent a good month de-aging Arsenio for that scene," Brewer continued. "That whole moment, I remember the first time seeing it and being like, 'Oh my god.'"

Murphy was also given the de-aging treatment in the scene in Mary's apartment.

"It's the thing I was most nervous about," Brewer said of de-aging his lead actors. "But I think we pulled it off."

Brewer believes it works convincingly because both Murphy and Hall - who are in their late 50s and mid 60s, respectively - still look similar to how they did in the 1980s.

"We didn't do a ton of work to them," he said. "But we did it."

"Coming 2 America" also has Murphy and Hall reprising many of the characters they played in the first movie, including barbers Mr. Clarence (Murphy) and Morris (Hall), Jewish man Saul (Murphy), Reverend Brown (Hall), and Randy Watson (Murphy) the lead singer of Sexual Chocolate.

"Coming 2 America" is now available on Amazon Prime Video.