‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’: Bill Murray takes on the supernatural
Original stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson return for another showdown with spooks and specters in “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.”
Bill Murray is speaking out about his misconduct scandal.
The “Ghostbusters” star, 74, told The New York Times’ ‘The Interview” podcast that he doesn’t “go too many days or weeks without thinking” about what happened on “Being Mortal,” the movie that shut down production in 2022 after a woman complained about his behavior on set.
“I ended up being, to my mind, barbecued,” Murray said.
Aziz Ansari was directing “Being Mortal” and starring in the film alongside Murray, Seth Rogen and Keke Palmer. But in April 2022, Searchlight Pictures told the crew that production had been suspended after the studio was “made aware of a complaint,” which reports revealed was against Murray.
On The New York Times podcast, Murray alleged this incident occurred when he kissed a woman he was working with on the movie as a joke while they were both wearing masks. He did not name the woman but said she “wasn’t a stranger” to him.
“I was wearing a mask, and I gave her a kiss, and she was wearing a mask,” Murray said. “It wasn’t like I touched her. I gave her a kiss through a mask, through another mask, to another person.”
Murray said that this was “something that I had done to someone else before,” and he defended it as a lighthearted joke.
“I certainly thought it was light, and I thought it was funny,” he told the Times. “To me, it’s still funny, the idea that you could give someone a kiss with a mask on. It’s still stupid. That’s all it was.”
The “Groundhog Day” actor said the incident “still bothers me because that movie was stopped” as a result of the complaint, and he described the situation as a “great disappointment because I thought I knew someone, and I did not.”
Murray previously told CNBC in 2022 that the misconduct allegation came down to a “difference of opinion” with a woman he was working with. At that time, he said he and the woman were “trying to make peace with each other” but that he was unsure if the production would continue.
“We are both professionals, we like each other’s work, we like each other I think and if we can’t really get along and trust each other there’s no point in going further working together or making the movie as well,” Murray said. “It’s been quite an education for me.”
Murray also told CNBC at the time, “The world’s different than it was when I was a little kid. What I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now.”
“Being Mortal,” which was set to be Ansari’s feature directorial debut, never resumed production. In 2022, Palmer told Variety she was “pretty devastated” that the film wouldn’t be finished but that she hoped there could still be a way to “salvage it.”
Ansari later moved on to directing “Good Fortune,” a film he stars in alongside Palmer, Rogen and Keanu Reeves. That movie is set for release in October.
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