Richard Dreyfuss Says Bill Murray Was A “Drunken Bully” On The Set Of “What About Bob?”
We can add Richard Dreyfuss to the list of DGAF pepaws and memaws who can no longer be bothered with keeping secrets about the goings on behind the scenes in Hollywood. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Richard shared a story about his What About Bob? co-star Bill Murray being a drunken, belligerent bully who once threw an ashtray at his face. Considering Bill’s love/hate relationship with cameras and the people behind them, coupled with the fact that his ex-wife Jennifer Butler Murray accused him of physical abuse, it doesn’t come as much of a shock. Add in the public drunkenness and you maybe can see why Richard might be asking, what about Bill?
Yahoo Reports:
On coping with an abusive Murray on What About Bob?: “I didn’t talk about it for years. … Bill just got drunk at dinner. He was an Irish drunken bully, is what he was. … He came back from dinner [one night] and I said, ‘Read this [script tweak], I think it’s really funny.’ And he put his face next to me, nose-to-nose. And he screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Everyone hates you! You are tolerated!’ There was no time to react, because he leaned back and he took a modern glass-blown ashtray. He threw it at my face from [only a couple feet away]. And it weighed about three quarters of a pound. And he missed me. He tried to hit me. I got up and left.”
Here’s the interview. Just a warning, Richard talks kind of slowly as if there wasn’t a 25 foot great white shark coming for his ass.
Richard Dreyfuss has some unfond memories of working with Bill Murray on What About Bob? He calls Murray a "drunken Irish bully" and told me Murray screamed in his face and tried to hurl a glass ashtray at his head.
Our full #RoleRecall interview here: https://t.co/A7d9oObJPN pic.twitter.com/ZHFnxk2TZf
— Kevin Polowy (@djkevlar) June 26, 2019
Richard’s son Ben Dreyfuss #tooktotwitter to confirm the story, claiming himself, his sister and his mom were all on the WAB set.
This story about Bill Murray is 100% true and I was on that set and so was @jeramiedreyfuss and @EmilyDreyfuss. And there’s actually worse shit that Bill Murray did during that movie to other people that my dad didn’t even mention because he probably felt it wasn’t his place. https://t.co/GAncnBKYky
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) June 27, 2019
Ben also added to the conversation by describing other incidents of Bill behaving badly.
Oh well actually having now taken two seconds to read the wikipedia on this film I see that the person I was worried about outing, the late wonderful Laura Ziskin, already told the story of the other incident. pic.twitter.com/0SRIY7zLke
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) June 27, 2019
Oh course, because we can’t have one single nice thing, Richard himself has been accused of misconduct in a professional setting. In 2017 a woman accused Richard of sexual harassment that she claims took place over a 2-3 year period in the mid-80s when they were working on a TV show together. And what prompted her to come forward was Richard’s support of his son Harry Dreyfuss (Ben’s brother) who accused Kevin Spacey of groping him in his (Kevin’s) London apartment, while his father was present. They were in London because Kevin was directing Richard in a play at the Old Vic. The title of that play? Complicit.
I guess you really can’t throw a rock in Hollywood (or in some cases an ashtray) without hitting something shady.
Pic: Wenn.com