Geena Davis revisits uncomfortable interview in which Bill Murray pulled down her dress strap
Geena Davis recently accused Bill Murray of behaving inappropriately towards her while filming the 1990 comedy Quick Change. Now, she's recounting another uncomfortable incident in which the embattled actor pulled down her dress strap during an interview on late-night TV.
In a sit down with British outlet i, the actress discussed promoting the film with Murray during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, calling it "awful."
In a clip from the talk show (see below), Murray can be seen repeatedly stroking Davis' arm and at one point, taking the strap of her dress down, forcing her to readjust her outfit quickly.
"Oh, you saw?" Davis said when the i reporter asked her about the footage. "Isn't it stunning? It's awful."
As Murray touches Davis, she tells Hall, "I did have to audition. It was a lot like this, in fact."
"He touched you a lot in the audition?" Hall asks Davis.
"Yeah, I swear," Davis says. "The first thing he did was take my shirt out of my pants and start tickling my stomach."
Davis appears to brush off Murray's actions in the clip, but looking back on it, she now says she feels differently. "I forgot that," she told i. "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."
EW has reached out to Murray's representative for comment.
Earlier this month, Davis unveiled her memoir Dying of Politeness, in which she wrote that Murray insisted on using a massage device called the Thumper on her during the audition process for Quick Change, saying he "placed the thing on my back for a total of about two seconds." She also said he once yelled at her in front of the crew for being late while she was waiting on wardrobe.
"That was bad," Davis told The Times. "The way he behaved at the first meeting… I should have walked out of that or profoundly defended myself, in which case I wouldn't have got the part."
David Livingston/Getty; Samir Hussein/WireImage Geena Davis and Bill Murray.
Davis starred as Phyllis Potter in the crime drama, which also starred Randy Quaid, Jason Robards, and Stanley Tucci. Murray played her boyfriend and also served as a co-director and producer on the film.
"I could have avoided that treatment if I'd known how to react or what to do during the audition," she continued. "But, you know, I was so non-confrontational that I just didn't…"
The news came months after Searchlight Pictures suspended the production of Being Mortal after an alleged incident with Murray and another cast member. The movie, written, directed, and produced by Aziz Ansari, has since been suspended from production.
"I did something I thought was funny, and it wasn't taken that way," Murray said in his defense to CNBC back in April. "The company, the movie studio, wanted to do the right thing, so they wanted to check it all out, investigate it, and so they stopped the production."
Murray also made headlines recently after Rob Schneider claimed he "hated" the Saturday Night Live show cast, including Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, when he returned to host in the sketch show '90s.
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