Last year, a series of accusations began to unfold against Bill Murray. An Aziz Ansari-directed film went on pause due to allegations (as detailed in the Puck newsletter) from a production staffer, which Murray addressed as saying that he meant to do something “funny and it wasn’t taken that way” while the staffer called the actions “entirely sexual.” This followed Lucy Liu’s 2021 accusations against Murray, who she claimed made “inexcusable” remarks during Charlie’s Angels, and in October 2022, Geena Davis came forward with her own accusations against Murray, who she accused (while speaking with UK’s The Times) of on-set temper tantrums and inappropriate actions during a hotel room meeting, including his insistence upon using “the thumper” on her.
Geena has now elaborated further while speaking with Kara Swisher for New York magazine about her 1989 experience on the set of Quick Change. There’s much more detail on that “thumper”/”massage device,” which Geena says that Bill used in a hotel room full of men who didn’t step in to stop him. She “realized it was just to see if he could force me to do something inappropriate.” In addition, Davis describes how she was “literally shaking” when Bill allegedly burst into a trailer to berate her after the costume department caused a slight delay, which enraged him:
Bill Murray — in a full clown costume, by the way — slams into the trailer with with, you know, rage coming out of his eyeballs and starts screaming at me and swearing at me: “Get the f*ck out there! What the f*ck are you doing? Move! Move!” And he got behind me and screamed in my ear, “Move! Move faster! Move it!” And we’re getting to this intersection where there’s hundreds of people watching this, and he keeps it up and keeps it up until he says, “Stand there” and points to a mark on the pavement and starts shooting.
And I was literally shaking, and he elbowed me after a few takes. He said, “What’s up with you? Come on, come on. It’s all good.”
Davis looks back on the matter, reflecting on how she had just won an Oscar (for The Accidental Tourist), and “he got the opportunity to really put me in my place and really shamed me.” Swisher reacted with a “he got you in line,” and Davis admitted that she didn’t come forward with her allegations for decades because “I felt so ashamed,” and she suggested that she feared not being able to “do things” in Hollywood. She didn’t publicly discuss the subject until penning her 2022 memoir, Dying of Politeness.
(Via New York)