Bill Murray dropped some behind-the-scenes secrets about the early days of Saturday Night Live, some of which he readily admitted “sounds like insane s–t.”
Murray was asked about the early days on the late-night show during a Monday appearance on Watch What Happens Live, where host Andy Cohen wanted to know, specifically, what the after parties were like then.
Murray said it’s not what most people think, though he did describe bar-hopping the “five boroughs” with the cast after kicking the party off at John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd’s private bar. “I remember dragging people out of there on their feet, it was the most fun,” Murray said, prompting Cohen to ask whether the “mythology about the drug use and the early days of SNL is overblown.”
“Of course it is,” Murray said. “People say like, ‘Oh yeah they were all on drugs.’ People were able to create a live 90-minute television show every week, just high and completely out of control,” Murray said sarcastically, “Very likely.”
He continued, “If people took drugs, they didn’t take them to get in the way of of letting down their friends, their fellows, and all these professionals” who make the show. “It’s cool to say, ‘They were all druggies,‘” Murray said, clearly annoyed with the idea.
“Really, what the hell did you get done while we were doing that? Why did you get done while we were doing that?” he continued, noting the cast felt too much “responsibility” for their peers for the myth to be true.
One such early peer was a young Bruce Willis, who Murray revealed was an NBC page during the early SNL seasons, and would have been around 20 or 21 at the time. Willis’ job was to “come and go to the dressing rooms and refill the M&Ms and pretzels kind of thing in the actors’ rooms.”
“This sounds like insane s–t,” Murray continued just just after getting choked up about Willis, who he calls a “good friend” amid the actor’s battle with frontotemporal dementia.
“I remember when I met him after he was already a successful guy, he said you and Gilda [Radner] were nice to me,” Murray continued. “I always thought ‘OK, I’m good with this guy.’ He was a good guy.”
