In the book "Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live", Dick Ebersol recounts that Eddie Murphy came into his office and said "I want to kill Buckwheat. I can't stand it anymore, Everwhere I go people say Do Buckwheat, do this, do that. I want to kill him." Even though Ebersol felt that Buckwheat was one of the hottest characters in late-night television at the time, he told Murphy to develop something with his regular writing partners Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, and they came up with the multi-part Death of Buckwheat saga, which ran over the course of several weeks.