NBC’s hit sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live has helped launch the careers of a number of iconic comedians, and the network recently announced plans to gather all of the series’ former cast members and writers to celebrate its 40th anniversary next month. While the nature of the anniversary special is still unclear, Eddie Murphy officially confirmed his attendance to News One on Friday, meaning it will be the first time he’s graced SNL‘s iconic stage since leaving the show with bad blood over three decades ago.

Murphy’s last appearance on Saturday Night Live was his hosting stint on Dec. 15, 1984, which occurred months after he left the series’ regular cast during Season Nine. While the comedian-musician told News One that his absence from the show has simply been because “it just never worked out where the timing was right” for him to return, Murphy has previously admitted that he has been offended by comments made about him on the show over the years. In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone, Murphy stated that “they were shitty” to him after he left the show, and he didn’t like that the writers and fellow comedian David Spade made a jab at his career by saying “Look, children, a falling star,” in reference to a picture of him around the time of his 1995 film Vampire in Brooklyn. 

“There was that David Spade sketch. I made a stink about it, it became part of the folklore. What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot,” Murphy told Rolling Stone. “It was like, ‘Hey, come on, man, it’s one thing for you guys to do a joke about some movie of mine, but my career? I’m one of you guys. How many people have come off this show whose careers really are fucked up, and you guys are shitting on me?'”

Murphy added that he blamed the producers and Lorne Michaels for the sketch as much as he blamed Spade, since all of the jokes made on Saturday Night Live have to go through them first.

“I felt shitty about that for years, but now, I don’t have none of that,” said Murphy. “I wouldn’t go to retrospectives, but I don’t let it linger. I saw David Spade four years ago. Chris Rock was like, ‘Do you guys still hate each other?” and I was like, ‘I don’t hate David Spade, I’m cool with him.'”

Along with Murphy, SNL legends like Molly Shannon have confirmed their participation in the anniversary special, which airs Sunday, Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. on NBC.

“Saturday Night Live is an institution unlike anything else in television history,” said Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, in a statement last year. “The many brilliant ‘Not Ready for Primetime Players’ over the years is a who’s who of film and television comedy for the last two generations. This special is just one of the many ways we plan to celebrate SNL‘s historic 40th season.”