Bill Murray has revealed that he “wept three times” during Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary special in February.
“It was surprisingly emotional,” Murray, 74, told SiriusXM’s Sway in the Morning on Friday, February 28.
Murray appeared during the SNL 50 celebration to rank his favorite “Weekend Update” anchors in a sendup of the comedic Best Of lists he presented during his own tenure at the “Update” desk.
The Ghostbusters star, who joined SNL in its second season, shared with Sway what it was like to be back in the hallowed halls of Studio 8H for one of the most star-studded nights in TV history.
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“[The show] really got to me,” Murray confessed. Asked what made him weep, Murray joked: “There were sketches that were dying. No, I’m just kidding.”
More seriously, he explained: “Obviously, there’s a lot of video and history that they were showing, and I didn’t see it coming, but [when they showed] Gilda [Radner] up there dancing with Steve Martin, I remember being there watching them rehearse that dance number for days and days and days.”
The 1978 sketch “Dancing in the Dark” has frequently served as a tribute to original cast member Radner, who died in 1989 from ovarian cancer, during SNL‘s anniversary specials. Murray famously dated Radner during their time on the NBC series.
“I loved Gilda, I was crazy about Gilda,” he recalled on Sway in the Morning. “I just sort of came apart. I was sitting there in a dressing room with a bunch of people and I couldn’t stop [crying].”
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Later in the night, original Not Ready for Prime Time Player Garrett Morris introduced director Tom Schiller‘s 1978 short film Don’t Look Back in Anger, which depicted Murray’s costar John Belushi in old-age makeup as he visited the graves of his SNL cast mates. The film now has added poignancy because Belushi was the first SNL cast member to die, at age 32 in March 1982.
“To see that, and to see [John], I could [cry] now just thinking about it,” he told Sway. “To see that sort of foreshadowing… and to miss him, John was a guy who really made a lot of careers possible. He dragged all of us out from Chicago… A lot of people slept on John Belushi’s couch until they got on their feet.”
Murray made his first appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1976 as a replacement for original cast member Chevy Chase, who quit the show after just one season as its leading star.
While Murray became a mainstay on SNL throughout the late 1970s, his first few episodes were critically panned. The comedian eventually managed to turn around public opinion with an on-air statement apologizing for his subpar performances.
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“I don’t think I’m making it on the show,” he memorably told viewers.
During a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Murray remembered feeling genuine anxiety in the run up to his sarcastic public apology.
“I thought, ‘God, I’ve got to do something’ because if I were watching this show, I’d say, ‘That guy’s gotta go. They gotta get rid of him soon,’” he admitted to host Seth Meyers. “I felt like I had to cut that [reaction] off. Before I even said it, [producer] Lorne Michaels said, ‘I’ve got an idea for you’… I said, ‘Great minds [think alike], Lorne, great minds!’”
SNL 50 was a rare chance to reunite the show’s 1970s cast, with Murray, Morris, Chase, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman together again. The only living original SNL cast member missing was Dan Aykroyd, who later explained via X: “Advantage of not attending – got to see every second of concert and show on TV.”
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET.
