"The first thing he did was take my shirt out of my pants and start tickling my stomach.”
The odd pairing of the iconic comedian Bill Murray and his wonderful friend, surf great Kelly Slater, is one of the more endearing. Murray doesn’t seem like a surfer, though was there at the founding of the legendary G-Land camp. Slater doesn’t seem funny, though provides more honest laughs than most.
The two golf together, smile together, look fantastic together. The only cloud floating across their shared sky, a recent spate of re-surfaced complaints against Murray.
Days ago we learned that Seth Green, an actor from yesteryear, had accused the Saturday Night Live alum of dropping him into a trashcan for failing to get off the couch. Whilst it seemed very much deserved, to me, mainstream opinion seemed to go very much against Murray.
And now we have an old Arsenio Hall interview come back to life wherein Murray does unwanted touching to co-star Geena Davis.
Per Variety:
Geena Davis’ uncomfortable experiences with Bill Murray extended beyond the set of their 1990 crime comedy “Quick Change.” Davis has already spoken about her “bad” audition for the film, which allegedly included Murray trying to use a massage device on her, but in a new interview with i magazine she addressed a press tour interview the two did in which Murray took down her dress strap and repeatedly touched her arm. The actors were on “The Arsenio Hall Show” to promote “Quick Change.”
“Oh, you saw?” Davis asked the reporter who brought up the Arsenio Hall interview, which is still available to view online. “Isn’t it stunning? It’s awful.”
During the interview, Murray touched Davis’ arm as Davis told Hall, “I did have to audition. It was a lot like this in fact.”
“He touched you a lot in the audition?” Hall asked Davis.
“Yeah, I swear,” Davis responded. “The first thing he did was take my shirt out of my pants and start tickling my stomach.”
Davis told this story to Hall with a light attitude and a smile on her face, but reflecting back on it she now said, “I forgot that. Telling it that way, just as a humorous anecdote, I must have thought, ‘Well, it’s ultimately funny, or makes a good story,’ when in fact it was so devastating.”
Not a very flattering portrait under the lens of modern times but, also, not even flattering under the lens of Arsenio Hall heydays.
Murray has yet to respond but do you think the Life Aquatic star will be able to come out, career unscathed thanks to the support of his friend Kelly Slater or do you think Slater will jump ship, as it were?
You can read, and watch, a beautiful exchange between the two here.
Tough days.