Robin Williams' Oscar Advice for Eddie Murphy

"He's so good, man—he's brilliant," former Academy Award host says of fellow funnyman

It's been 25 years since Robin Williams cohosted the Oscars—and he still has no desire to do it again.

"I like to do some presenting," Williams told me yesterday while promoting Happy Feet Two (out Nov. 18). "Come in for a minute and get the f--k out and then just sit back and watch Jack [Nicholson] in the front row."

That's not to say he doesn't have some advice for hosting newbie Eddie Murphy...

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"I say, 'Eddie, be as many characters as you can be,'" Williams said. "Anytime he does somebody else, he kills it. If he does anything as funny as the Nutty Professor in one of those opening videos and if they let him become other people, he will destroy. He's so good, man. He's brilliant...It's getting that first laugh. Billy [Crystal] said it, 'Once you get the first laugh, you smell blood and it's off and running.' "

Williams also proves to be a master of multiple characters. He reprises his roles of Ramon and Lovelace in the second of the George Miller-directed Happy Feet flicks.

"George said, 'I want Ramon to be an Argentinian football fan,' so I went with that," he said. "But then someone said, 'You know your accent isn't Argentinian—it's Cuban."

As for Lovelace, Williams laughed, "Because he has that Al Sharpton hair, I kind of went Baptist on him with a little bit of Sharpton and a little bit of Barry White—kind of an evangelical preacher who is not afraid to lay his hands upon the chicas."

Sofia Vergara is new to the franchise, playing sexpot penguin Carmen.

"She's as sweet as she is funny, so it was a gift," Williams gushed about the Modern Family star. "She can take a vowel and make you harder than Chinese algebra."

The first Happy Feet picked up the Oscar for Best Animated Film. The sequel is expected to be as big of a hit, if not bigger.

Even so, a third installment isn't a definite. "George said it best, 'I can't even think about that,' " Williams said. "He said, 'I don't think I can do it unless I can do it better than this one.' I was like, 'Good luck with that—just try topping this one!' "