The actor talks about his new film “The Friend,” his jerky past and what he doesn’t get about himself. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is Bill Murray's new movie 'The Friend' about?
From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. In Bill Murray's new movie, The Friend, which is based on a great novel by Sigrid Nunez, he plays Walter, Walter's best friends with Iris, played by Naomi Watts. Through a surprising course of events, Iris winds up having to take in Walter's Great Dane.
And by the way, Iris lives alone in a modest apartment in Manhattan, so not exactly ideal for a dog the size of a small horse, and not exactly nice of Walter. Like so many of Murray's late career characters, Walter is funny and charismatic, but he's also kind of a jerk. He's resentful and self-centered, and he's caused some real damage.
Now, I'm a huge Bill Murray fan, and I sometimes imagine those more recent roles as kind of like alternate world versions of the comedy characters that made him a superstar. Because Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters or Phil Connors in Groundhog Day depict just two examples. They could be selfish and even cruel, but in the end, they always get away with it.
Maybe this is a little too much cosmic thinking on my part, but it's almost as if latter-day Bill Murray characters are suffering the karmic payback owed to his earlier ones. That tension between being beloved and leaving damage behind him is something that's come up in Murray's off-screen life, too.
Chapter 2: Has Bill Murray faced any controversies in his career?
Just a few years ago, in 2022, he was alleged to have behaved inappropriately with a female staff member on the set of the film Being Mortal. She said that he straddled her and kissed her through masks, which they were both wearing as part of COVID protocols. The production was shut down, and eventually they reached a settlement.
And further back, directors and co-stars like Geena Davis, Lucy Liu, Richard Dreyfuss, and Harold Ramis have said Murray was, to put it lightly, not always the easiest to work with. So how do all these sides of Bill Murray fit together? Well, at a hotel in Manhattan, accompanied by my producer Annabelle and a publicist named Charlie, I got a chance to find out.
Here's my interview with Bill Murray. Are you David? I'm David. I'm Bill.
How are you?
I'm good, thank you.
Okay. You know this is going to last 60 to 90 minutes? I did, yeah. Hi, Annabelle. I'm Bill. Are we on TV, or is it just talking? Just talking. Oh, good.
I've got a coffee for you.
All right, you guys want anything? They ask you if you want a cocktail.
Do you want a cocktail?
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Chapter 3: What are Bill Murray's thoughts on working with animals in films?
and uh he lives in uh iowa about 40 40 miles from des moines and after a nationwide search he was chosen as the dog of the moment uh he was not wearing a tight sweater or anything he was just the most capable dog he was an extremely well trained dog and uh and beautiful to look at of course and he's magnificent
you only have one or maybe two scenes with Bing in the movie. Right. But I felt like even in that brief time on screen, it looked to me like you kind of got a kick out of the dog. And in a weird way, it reminded me of, bear with me, of Larger Than Life, the movie in which you co-starred with an elephant. And then Not to Insult Children was, But I then rewatched What About Bob?
And there's a dinner scene, and it looks like you're just enjoying making the kids laugh. And it made me wonder what's fun about working with sort of non-professional actors or unseasoned actors.
Okay, that's a good, hard question. And I got to drink a little coffee before I try to answer that. Let's see. Well, the elephant and the dog,
are unusual in that they're consistent they are they have their nature and that is it they're in their nature all the time so the elephant i had an extraordinary time with and i always say it's the only coaster i ever cried over when i left you know i gave her a bath with a hose and i cried like a baby because she was the most beautiful coaster i ever had the smartest coaster i ever had
And the only one I miss, you know. She was extraordinary. And incredibly intelligent. Unbelievably amazing. You could sense the intelligence. Absolutely. Absolutely. Where you kind of go like, uh-oh, the one on four legs is ahead of me. So that's a challenge to show up. You know, every time I'd look at that animal, I would be reminded like, well... Ty's being Ty.
Why don't you try and be Bill and see if you can get it going? Let's go. So it was like that with her and with the dog, with Bing, the same thing. If something happened to you, if something actually occurred to you, and it happens in the movie where things happen, scenes take place, and you see the dog react to it. When I first saw the first cut of it, I said, are you kidding? Is this dog, like,
Stanislavski, how the hell is this dog doing this? It was crazy. The dog actually... Come on in. It's an emergency. So... Oh, boy. It was kind of... It was fun for me to be meeting the dog because I was really meeting the dog. So I was being... authentic anyway. I wasn't being like trying to be a certain way to get the dog to behave a certain way. I was actually meeting the dog. Well, cheers.
Cheers. We just have some drinks here.
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Chapter 4: How does Bill Murray approach acting and improvisation?
And it's going to be like a deposition. You have to swear to tell the truth. This is real. This is going to be proof. It's going to be proof of how much I showed up. So it's kind of lucky that I have that job because I don't know how often I'd be doing it. You mentioned this.
gallivanting thing you know and i'm very much aware of the um carly simon song you're so vain yeah whereas she says you you've charted a learjet to nova scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun someone that she's describing is like a pompous ass you know and i think okay
how do you say, well, I'm going to go to Tokyo and then to Raleigh and then to New York and then to Texas and not be just like a tumbleweed that's just like trying to like, have all these different experiences, you know, and just, and has no ground. So how do you do it?
Well, some of the things I actually have to do well, you know, some of the things I have to do well, you know, I can tell myself, okay, as long as I know that when I go here, I will really make, I will be forced to make an effort to show up, to reenter my body as much as possible to be what, you know, people turn out as called present, you know. So,
So I don't feel like, I could feel like a total twit doing all those things. But if I work hard, I don't feel that way.
Did you always have the desire or maybe it's a need to have that sense of presence? Or is that something you consciously tried to seek out?
No, I didn't always have it. No, I didn't always have it. So where does it come from? Not consciously. I mean, I may have wanted to sort of to express yourself as yourself and be sort of unique or your own thing. But I never thought of being sort of that way until I had a little bit more understanding about what that way might be, some sort of way of living where It's not all exterior.
There's interior.
I know a couple people who lost parents fairly early, and you lost your dad at 17. Right. And I think for them, it set them on a direction, you know, where they realized there's certain things they want from life. Do you think your dad's passing put you on a particular path?
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Chapter 5: What does being present mean to Bill Murray?
That's funny. Well, that sounds like a person I know, yeah.
Yeah, she was very sweet about it.
I always appreciated that. So did you ever get it done? Have a child? Well, you did that, obviously.
Oh, no. A colleague of mine pinch-hit for me and did the interview. So The Friend, it's a beautiful novel. It's about a woman played by Naomi Watts who's sort of a pivotal figure in her life, Walter, played by you, dies from suicide. This all happens in the first couple minutes of the movie, so I'm not giving anything away.
And then, Naomi Watts' character has to take care of Walter's dog, which is a giant Great Dane. So, what was interesting to you about this project and the role of Walter in particular?
Well, Naomi called me up and said, you know, these folks would love to have you be in this thing, you know. And I said, okay, you know, get me a hard copy of the script. And so I got a copy of the book. So I read it, and the fact that Naomi was attached got me to look at it in the first place very quickly and so forth. We made a movie called— St. Vincent. St. Vincent. And had a good experience.
And, you know, we liked each other professionally, and then we became friends. So, I don't know what your question was. Why did you do the movie? Why did I do the movie? So, I did the movie because I thought it was good, and I kind of like the idea of being, you know, you're being asked to help, sort of. Someone asks you to do something.
You're kind of a little bit more, well, you know, someone I like, and... And... As an actor, I love it because you're kind of reminded of what the rule was. This great director at Second City, Del Close said, you're worried about how you're coming off in a movie or a scene or something like that. You just think about making the other person look good.
And whenever I forget in a movie, and sometimes I'll be working with some intimidating thug actor or actress, and I go like, oh, God, I got to deal with this somehow. And then I just go, okay, I'm just going to make this one look good. Everything changes when you do that.
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Chapter 6: How did Bill Murray's early life shape his career?
to enable them to express the hurt for the camera, you know? So it's rough. It's rough stuff. And you've got to take a deep breath and exhale afterwards and, you know, like, get over here, you know? That was just, you know, that wasn't us. That was that, you know? And it's, you know... If you don't do it that hard, you know, you're kind of cheating. Yeah. Is it cathartic for you?
Like, do you somehow grow from that experience? Yeah, you can feel that too. When you performed as a horrible creep, you know that, hey, I have been that horrible creep. I have been that horrible creep and not seen it and not been aware of it. And if you're really seeing it, if you're doing it in the scene, you're doing it well, you're seeing it.
You know, something that also stood out for me with the film, and it's connected maybe to what we were just talking about, there is a parallel between Walter and you in that Walter in the film has been accused of some inappropriate misconduct. And a couple years ago on Being Mortal, there was some... It was described as inappropriate misconduct. I mean, surely those parallels... occurred to you?
Were you, did you think about them during the film or were you trying to work through something?
I mean, I don't go too many days or weeks without thinking of what happened, not being mortal. Yeah. Can you say what happened? Yeah, I can say what happened. I think I'm allowed to. There was some sort of, you know, I tried to make peace. I thought I was trying to make peace. I ended up being like, to my mind, barbecued.
But someone that I worked with, you know, that I had lunch with, you know, on various days of the week and so forth, we were all, it was COVID, we were all wearing masks, and we were all just stranded in this one room listening to this crazy scene. And I don't know what prompted me to do it. 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. You know, it was like, it wasn't like I touched her, but it was just, I gave her a kiss through a mask, through another mask to another person. And it wasn't, she wasn't a stranger.
And you said you think about this often.
Well, it still bothers me because that movie was stopped by the, whatever they call the human rights or H&R of the Disney Corporation, which is probably a little bit more strident than some other countries. And I, you know, it turned out there was like pre-existing conditions and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, what? Why was anyone supposed to know anything like that? It was like...
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