Bill Murray hated members of the early ’90s Saturday Night Live cast — and especially Chris Farley, Rob Schneider alleges.
Schneider, who was hired as a writer on SNL in 1988 and was a cast member from 1994, when Chris Farley and Adam Sandler were also on the show, said in a recent interview on SiriusXM’s The Jim Norton & Sam Roberts Show that Murray, who appeared on the show several times during that period, “absolutely hated us.” (The subject of Bill Murray came up after a discussion of Robert Shaw’s supposedly bad attitude on the set of Jaws.)
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“It’s the same thing with Bill Murray,” Schneider said on the podcast. “I won’t say who the filmmaker was, but he was like, ‘Bill Murray, he’s gonna come, he’s gonna change the…dialogue. He’s gonna change things, and it’s gonna be great, but you don’t know who you’re gonna get — which Bill Murray you’re gonna get. The nice Bill Murray? Or you’re gonna get the tough Bill Murray?’ He’s super nice to fans. He wasn’t very nice to us. … He hated us on Saturday Night Live when he hosted. Absolutely hated us. I mean, seething.”
But Bill Murray especially hated future Tommy Boy and Black Sheep star Chris Farley, Schneider contends. He believes that Murray may have hated for Farley for living as dangerously as Murray’s SNL contemporary John Belushi. Both Farley and Belushi died of drug overdoses at 33.
“He hated Chris Farley with a passion. Like just seething looking at him,” Schneider said. “I don’t know exactly, but I want to believe that it’s because Chris thought it was cool to be Belushi, who was his friend who he saw die, that he thought it was cool to be that out of control. That’s my interpretation, but I don’t really know. I don’t believe it. I only believe it 50 percent.”
Rob Schneider added that Murray was “my hero” and seemed to hate him less than the other cast members, adding that Murray “really hated Sandler, too.”
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A representative for Murray did not respond to a request for comment.
May I editorialize? Whatever feelings Murray had for Farley didn’t stop them from being brilliant together in one of my all time favorite SNL sketches. Or perhaps the supposed hatred provides a perfect explanation for the events of the following sketch, which aired on Feb. 20, 1993, as Murray hosted SNL to promote Groundhog’s Day. I present to you… “The Whipmaster”:
Main image: Chris Farley and Bill Murray on the Saturday Night Live sketch “The Whipmaster”
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