Here’s How ‘Parks And Rec’ Pulled Off Their Super Secret Bill Murray Cameo

We, like the rest of the internet, have been demanding that the great Bill Murray play the fabled Mayor Gunderson on Parks and Recreation for years now, but all hope seemed lost when creator Michael Schur said late last year, “I don’t think you’ll ever meet him. There’s an episode that has Mayor Gunderson in its fabric, so there is some discussion of him. But I don’t think you’ll ever see him walk on camera and wave and say hi.” Yeah, about that.

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But how did Schur and Amy Poehler’s Bill Murray dream come true?

According to EW, it began with the Terminator saying no.

Early in season 3, one name that got tossed around a bit was—brace yourself for this curve ball—Arnold Schwarzenegger. Former Parks star Rob Lowe was friends with the then-Governor of California and reached out to gauge his interest in a guest spot. (“We were going to have him on the show and never explain why he had an Austrian accent,” notes Schur.) Alas, Schwarzenegger told the Parks team that he couldn’t take the role while still in office. “He was very nice about it, and he really wanted to do it, but it just couldn’t work,” says Schur. (Via)

At this point, Schur and the writers decided that the only way we’d see the mayor is “if we got Bill Murray,” who, like Gunderson, is “more myth than man at this point.” Poehler and Aubrey Plaza reached out to Murray and told him, “This is your last chance. The mayor’s dying. Do you want to come lie in a coffin? It would be really funny.” One day, Schur got THE call.

Soon after, Schur received a simple voice mail from Bill Murray that said: “Hey, this is Bill Murray. I hear you might have some dead work for me.” (Via)

Once on set, Murray was a dream to work with.

While the few people who knew about it remained cautiously pessimistic that it would really pan out, Murray did indeed report for duty on the Parks set one day in November. The memorial service scene had already been filmed without him, but the producers arranged to reshoot part of it with him as the deceased man of the hour (and kept the whole thing under the tightest of wraps). “Once he had agreed to do it, we thought: The coolest possible thing is just to have him lying in the coffin. That’s the artistic choice,” says Schur. “But if you’ve got that guy around, you might as well as try to get him to say something out loud, right?” And so the writers added his video message that would be played at the memorial. Murray was given about 30 options to read. “He did every single one of them, one after another, and then he improvised two complete ones by himself,” praises Schur. “The one in the show is one that he used a tiny bit of what we had written and then it’s an improv from Bill Murray, which is so cool.”

As brief as his appearance is, Murray made the most of his time on the set. “He was just the most delightful person,” reports Schur. “Not only was he incredibly complimentary of the show, he went around to every one of the actors and told them how great they were and cited specific episodes and moments. He hung out on the set for three hours, watching us shoot the show.” (Via)

And that’s how Parks pulled off the best cameo since that time Urkel was on Full House.

Via EW

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