Get to know Eddie Murphy’s brothers, Charlie and Vernon

Eddie Murphy is a world-renowed comedian and actor, and he’s also a family man who has two brothers: Charlie Murphy, who died in 2017, and boxing coach Vernon Lynch.

Eddie and his brothers were raised by their mother and her husband, Vernon Lynch, Sr., who was a stepfather to Charlie and Eddie.

Charlie once told PR.com that if there were any challenges that came with being Eddie’s brother, it was that he had to push himself to keep working hard. As he put it, “The biggest challenge for me was just not giving up. To continue believing that you’re going to one day be acknowledged for what you’re doing.”

That didn’t mean that the brothers weren’t close. In a 2016 interview with Variety, Eddie said that Charlie is the first person he ever did an impression of. He added, “I’ve been doing him since I was two or three. He was my first impression. I wish he would get famous because people could see this great impression that I do.”

Here is what to know about Eddie Murphy’s brothers Charlie Murphy and Vernon Lynch, Jr.

Charlie, Eddie, and Vernon were 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in BrooklynEddie Murphy with his parents Vernon Sr. and Lillian and brother Vernon Jr.

DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Like his younger brother Eddie, Charlie was also 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in Brooklyn, New York. The two were raised by their mother and stepfather after their father died. Their younger brother Vernon was also 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in Brooklyn and is named after his father, Vernon Lynch, Sr., who died in 2001.

Charlie Murphy was in the military for six yearsEddie Murphy and Charlie Murphy at the ‘Norbit’ Film Premiere on February 8, 2007 in Los Angeles, California.

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Before starting his own comedy career, Charlie served six years in the military as a young adult, enlisting after spending years in jail as a teen.

He told PR.com that he made the decision to join after getting in trouble and explained, “When I was a teenager, my whole thing was… I was a street guy. I hung out with street people and when you hang out with a crowd like that you will end up in trouble.” Once released, Charlie signed up for the Navy the same day.

Charlie said of joining the Navy, “It was the best move I could have possibly made because everybody else that I know that I grew up with, two guys survived and everybody else is dead. And out of the two guys that survived, one of them just got out of prison, like, two weeks ago.”

Eddie has worked with both of his brothers

His time in the Navy also inspired Charlie to try his hand at comedic writing. He told PR.com, “Once you start realizing that you can do these things and you believe that you can do something, you start making an effort and you start doing. I took it upon myself when I went to Hollywood to work for my brother, to say, ‘You know what, I want to try writing.’ ”

Charlie added that he wrote his first movie in 1986 and sold it to Paramount for $150,000, with the understanding his brother Eddie would star. But the movie didn’t make it to production.

“The movie was about [crime boss] Nicky Barnes, and the only reason the movie didn’t get made is because back then you had dudes that were not visionaries,” he theorized to PR.com. “They were happy with my brother doing the same thing over and over again because they didn’t know what they were doing.”

Charlie and Eddie also collaborated on the 2007 movie Norbit. While Charlie said he did the “physical part” of writing the movie, the two were able to bring the film to fruition. As he said, “I’m the one whose hand was hurting when the movie finished being written.”

During the time they worked together, the brothers also once had the chance to play a game of basketball at Prince’s house. While recounting the story during a 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Murphy said that since the “Purple Rain” singer was wearing his “kind of Prince clothes,” Charlie joked, “Alright, it’s gonna be shirts against blouses.”

Lynch entered the entertainment industry in a different way, having briefly enjoyed a career as a musician in the late 1980s as part of the group K-9 Posse. After the group disbanded, he followed in his brothers’ footsteps and began a career as a writer. Lynch was one of the writers of the 1995 Wes Craven film Vampire in Brooklyn, which starred Eddie Murphy and Angela Bassett.

Charlie joined Chappelle’s Show in 2003Charlie Murphy in ‘CB4’.

Universal

Charlie gained national attention when he joined Chappelle’s Show in 2003 as a recurring performer. Joining the series brought his work to a wider audience, but he later admitted that getting paid was a problem for himself and for other performers on the show.

As he explained to PR.com, “I never even had a contract. That was week to week the whole time. … I had people say to me, ‘You’re only getting paid SAG minimum? They’re pimping you.’ ”

Charlie wasn’t the only performer who was struggling financially — he also revealed that he knew at least five people who left the show because of money.

However, Charlie praised his time on the show as a lot of fun. He added, “It was very much a fun thing, being on that show and to be around the people who were involved with it. The energy was always good energy.”

Eddie and Vernon mourned their brother after he died of leukemia in 2017Charlie Murphy and Vernon Lynch attend Eddie Murphy’s wedding at Plaza Hotel.

Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive/Getty

After having leukemia for several years, Charlie died in 2017. The news was reported by TMZ and confirmed by Charlie’s manager.

Variety reported that the Murphy family released a statement about Charlie’s death that read, “Our hearts are heavy with the loss today of our son, brother, father, uncle and friend Charlie. Charlie filled our family with love and laughter and there won’t be a day that goes by that his presence will not be missed. Thank you for the outpouring of condolences and prayers. We respectfully ask for privacy during this time of great loss for all of us.”

Vernon is his son’s boxing coach

These days Lynch works as his son’s boxing manager, a fact that is all the more poignant because his own father was a boxer. His son, Brandyn Lynch, won a belt in 2021 and currently has a 12-1-1 record.

Brandyn, who goes by the nickname “Bad News,” began training in martial arts when he was four years old. Lynch told Cheyanne Mumphrey about his son’s journey to martial arts success: “In [Brandyn’s] downtime he decided to go into a boxing gym and he found boxing. He’s been in love with boxing ever since. But he didn’t understand why he really wanted to do it as a profession … so after I told him about his background, he started to understand it was just in his blood to fight.”