Shortly before a Screen Actors Guild Q-and-A for his most recent movie, “Mr. Church,” Eddie Murphy's emotional state is total, absolute chill.

“I really have such a small amount of stress,” Murphy says. “I've always been aware that I have a charmed life. I'm from the Tilden Projects of Brooklyn. This is all gravy.”

Murphy didn't have too much to say about Bruce Beresford's “Mr. Church,” repeatedly calling the film, in which he plays a longtime cook to a woman dying of cancer and her young daughter, a teeny-tiny movie, a character piece where he's but one of many players, one that offered him the chance to go to sad places he's never visited as an actor. Released in September, it has grossed under $700,000.

On other subjects, though, Murphy offered plenty. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: There was a story about you in the New Yorker recently with the headline: “Why Is Eddie Murphy in Cinematic Exile?” Does it feel that way to you?

A: Exile? No. A few years back I took a break from grinding out movies. I stepped back, took a breath and gave the audience a break too. After 35 years in movies, I don't care who you are, people get sick of looking at you. But I'm always writing — a script, a song.

Q: What about stand-up material? You've said in the past you'd like to do another tour.

A: Yeah. One day I'll go full circle and do it. I'm curious to see what will come out of me. I'm so different. I stopped doing stand-up when I was a kid. I was 28 years old. That's another lifetime. I'm not edgy — at all.

Q: What about the scripts you mentioned? Are you like Prince with a vault?

A: (Laughs) I have a vault with a bunch of scripts, yeah.

Q: Will we see any of these made soon? Like I heard about one, “Buck Wonder, Super Slave.”

A: Now that's very edgy. I play a slave called Buck Wonder. And I also play the slave master, as well as Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. It's a bedtime story that an old man is telling his grandson about the true story of slavery and the Civil War. It's a parody of superhero movies and slave movies. It's pretty funny.

Q: I also heard about an R-rated, animated talking-animal movie.

A: That's “The Misadventures of Fluffy.” I was in New York years ago, and a show dog got loose in Central Park overnight. And they did a news story, and the dog was traumatized. I was wondering, “What happened to that dog in Central Park?” So I wrote “Fluffy.”

glenn.whipp@latimes.com