“A very seasoned professional”: the 1996 co-star Bill Murray called his favourite
Nobody knows what they’re going to get when Bill Murray arrives on set, which has been a blessing and a curse that’s defined his career for the last half-century.
There’s always the chance that he’ll show up, perform every scene to the best of his abilities, have a laugh with his co-stars in between takes, and when the director calls a wrap, everybody goes home with a big smile on their face and fond memories of working with the comedy legend.
Of course, not everyone has had that experience. In fact, there are more than a few former collaborators who were nothing but miserable working with the man who earned his nickname of the ‘Murricane’ by being a prickly customer on occasion, if not a complete and utter dickhead to the people he worked with.
Lucy Liu has several war stories from their time together on Charlie’s Angels, Richard Dreyfuss hated his guts by the time What About Bob? had finished shooting, Anjelica Huston saw both sides of his personality on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and his conduct on Being Mortal saw the whole film shut down and mothballed.
On the other hand, there are plenty of actors who haven’t got a bad word to say about Murray, and it’s impossible to tell how he’ll behave until he’s there in the flesh, which is famously a difficult thing to guarantee in the first place when convincing him to make a movie is often the hardest thing about it.
He’s had his run-ins over the years, but there was one scene partner that Murray showered in the utmost praise. It might say a lot about him, the way he conducts himself, and the way his abrasive personality has irritated so many performers and filmmakers over the years, though, seeing as they weren’t human.
“I worked with an elephant once who had done a few movies, and so she had experience, and was a very seasoned professional,” he explained. “The assistant director would say, ‘That’s a wrap for the day’, and she would already be on her way. She’d move before anyone. She knew when it was over, and before anyone, she was halfway to her trailer, martini in hand.”
That would be Tai, who was indeed a seasoned professional, having appeared in Big Top Pee-Wee, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Operation Dumbo Drop, and Quest for Fire, among others, before playing the role of Vera in 1996’s Larger Than Life, an otherwise terrible film that flopped at the box office.
Murray’s character inherits Vera after his father’s death, and they embark on a road trip so that he can sell her. It’s a rubbish film, yes, but for Murray, working with Tai was “one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in the movies,” and she’d remain booked and busy for the next two decades, before dying at the age of 53 in 2021, but at least she’ll always be remembered as his favourite co-star.
