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New 'Beverly Hills Cop' gives Eddie Murphy's Axel Foley a 'fresh and modern' makeover

Adam Graham, The Detroit News on

Published in Entertainment News

Bushman did wonder about the yellow WJLB T-shirt Foley wears in the film, saying in his 29 years at the station, there has never been, to his knowledge, a yellow T-shirt manufactured featuring the station's logo.

That's because the T-shirt was made by costume designer Nancy Steiner, who also created the faux-vintage baby blue WLLZ-FM (98.7) shirt that Foley wears in the film. (It's high time for vintage Detroit shirts in pop culture; on the new season of Amazon Prime Video's "The Boys," a character wears an old-school Palace of Auburn Hills T-shirt.)

Steiner, whose credits include "Promising Young Woman," "Lost in Translation" and TV's "Twin Peaks: The Return," worked with Grace LaVier, a shopper on the film who is from Detroit, who helped advise on Detroit brands and businesses with which Foley's character would identify. (In the film, Foley also wears a red T-shirt from Jolly Bar, a former bar on East Davison in Detroit.)

While the film chiefly takes place in Los Angeles, Steiner says she used the T-shirts "to bring that connection to Detroit." And they also give Foley a sort of timeless cool.

"For me, I wanted to keep Axel looking youthful, but only to a point. You don't want to make him look silly," she says. "He's not a fussy dresser. He's somebody who's comfortable in his own skin. He can wear whatever he feels comfortable in. And he’s an iconic figure, so I didn’t want to stray too far from how we’ve seen him before."

Foley still proudly supports his Lions; he wears a blue vintage Lions sweatshirt that Steiner was able to source online, as well as an updated version of his classic Detroit Lions varsity jacket.

 

There was talk of Foley wearing a reproduction of the original jacket, "but we decided that it shouldn't be that old one, because that means he's had it for 40 years, and it would have been really beat up," Steiner says. The new jacket, which "does not exist in the world" and was custom-made for Murphy, updates Foley's style. "I wanted him to look a little more fresh and modern," she says.

Murphy, 63, did have input on his character's wardrobe, Steiner says, and he did veto at least one look he was presented with, a vintage looking radio station T-shirt he reasoned his character would not listen to. But for the most part, "we were quite lucky," she says. "He liked most of the things we brought him, so it wasn't a big struggle."

Steiner says there were discussions about Foley bringing back the Mumford T-shirt from the first film, but she ultimately decided against it. (The Detroit high school is also the alma mater of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who wanted it in the film, Steiner says.)

"I went round and round, and I was like, does he really need to wear the same thing that he wore 40 years ago? I just didn't think it was necessary," she says. "I thought, it's Axel, people know who he is, we don't need to bring those same things back. We need to put him in the present, we need to make him a little more modern. So for me, that felt correct."

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