1 day Ago By People
Bill Murray said his alleged misconduct incident on the set of the film Being Mortal in 2022 “still bothers” him. The actor, 74, was accused of misconduct by a younger female crew member in April 2022, and he reportedly reached a settlement of just over $100,000 with the accuser that October. A report published at the time claimed that Murray “straddled” the woman on a prop bed and kissed her on the mouth through masks worn for on-set COVID safety protocol.
The incident resulted in an internal on-set investigation, and the Aziz Ansari -led project, which was being produced by the Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures, was ultimately suspended indefinitely. Now, in a new candid interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, April 5, Murray said he felt “barbecued” by the experience — despite saying he had tried to “make peace” with the affected parties. “I don’t go too many days or weeks without thinking of what happened.
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I dunno what prompted me to do it,” he told the Times . “It’s something that I had done to someone else before, and I thought it was funny, and every time it happened, it was funny.” “I was wearing a mask, and I gave her a kiss, and she was wearing a mask.
It wasn’t like I touched her, but it was just, I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn’t a stranger,” he recalled, adding that he ate lunch with the person “on various days of the week.” Related: Bill Murray Reveals He Cried 3 Different Times During 'Surprisingly Emotional' SNL 50 Special When asked if he thought he had learned from the experience, the Groundhog Day star replied: “I think so.
” He added: “You can teach an old dog new tricks. But it was a great disappointment, because I thought I knew someone, and I did not. I certainly thought it was light.
I thought it was funny. To me it’s still funny, the idea that you could give someone a kiss with a mask on. It’s still stupid.
It’s all it was.” PEOPLE reached out to Murray's attorney and Disney for comment on April 5, but did not receive an immediate response. Related: Bill Murray Makes Rare Comment About His Personal Life: 'I Know I've Done Some Damage' Elsewhere in his interview, Murray went on to challenge other public narratives about him — including specifically addressing a claim in which he is said to have thrown an ashtray at actor Richard Dreyfuss when they worked together on the 1991 film What About Bob? “You can tell that story as much as you like, but it’s never going to be true,” Murray told the Times .
“I did fire a glass, but I threw it at the ceiling. We were in a townhouse on the set of What About Bob? and I did not fire it at anyone. I threw it up in a far corner of the townhouse, assuming it might break upon contact with the ceiling and the walls, but I didn’t throw it at anyone.
” “If I’d thrown it at Dreyfuss, I’d have hit him,” he added. Murray also addressed a prior claim from actress Geena Davis that he had yelled at her in front of about “300 people” on a movie set, calling it "outrageous." “When someone has an episode like mine on Being Mortal , the world goes searching for more proof that this person is a monster.
An absolute monster. Well, I’ve had interactions with hundreds of thousands of people over 40, 50 years. Now, you can come up with half a dozen [with bad experiences].
If you really worked, you’d probably come up with a couple dozen," he said. Read the original article on People.
