John Landis’s 1983 classic Trading Places, starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, is one of the most celebrated comedies of its time. It has even become a Christmas staple in Italy. However, it contains at least a few moments that modern viewers think haven’t aged well. Don Ameche’s character using the n-word has, of course, gotten a fair amount of negative attention in subsequent years, and the line is often removed when the film gets shown on TV. Then there’s the part where Louis Winthorpe III (Aykroyd) dresses up in blackface to hide his identity. If you haven’t seen it, you can check out the offending segments below.“I adore Aykroyd, but it is impossible to watch this scene without wincing and wishing dearly that Harold Ramis had been on set to rein in some of his friend’s excesses, as he did on Ghostbusters,” read one 2014 retrospective from The Guardian. “Lord only knows what Murphy was thinking throughout this scene as he and a blacked up Aykroyd lark about in a train carriage together.” A writer for GQ shared similar sentiments in 2020, describing the movie as follows: “Featuring a gorilla-human rape, blackface, and a clichéd tart with a heart as the only female character, there is so much that is wrong with 1983’s Trading Places that it’s actually hard to type down.”“Trading Places” Was Once One of the Most Celebrated Comedies of the 1980s—Now It’s Being Re-Evaluated for Its Most Controversial MomentsAykroyd addressed the controversy himself during a 2023 interview with The Daily Beast, telling them that it was unlikely he’d be able to get away with doing blackface nowadays. He went on to explain that both he and Murphy were improvising while filming that scene, and that neither Murphy nor his all-black entourage batted an eyelash back then. Furthermore, Aykroyd recalled, nobody objected to him being in blackface or said anything about it, for that matter. In his words, “It was just a good comic beat that was truthful to the story.”However, Aykroyd admitted in that same interview that he probably wouldn’t choose to do a blackface scene at this stage in his career. He also said he doesn’t think he’d be allowed to do a Jamaican accent, whether he was donning blackface at the same time or not. These days, Aykroyd believes that anything like that is out the window. “I would be hard-pressed to do an English accent and get away with it,” he suggested in conclusion. “They’d say, ‘Oh, you’re not English, you can’t do it.’”The post 43 Years Ago, Dan Aykroyd Filmed a Scene That Became One of Comedy’s Most Controversial Moments Ever appeared first on VICE.