Bill Murray names the greatest ‘Saturday Night Live’ star ever: “Best work anybody ever did”
In 2024, Bill Murray was asked who he felt could play him in Jason Reitman’s upcoming Saturday Night, a movie set on the opening night of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Now, Murray didn’t get involved in SNL until the second season and, therefore, wasn’t around on that fateful evening, so the question was a bit flawed. However, his answer was still interesting.
Among three performers clearly namechecked as a gag – Kenan Thompson, Amy Poehler, and Kristen Wiig – Murray mentioned one star who could feasibly have played him. It was no coincidence that it happened to be the same performer Murray once dubbed SNL’s greatest-ever star.
Murray talked extensively about his three seasons on the world’s most famous sketch show between 1977 and 1980 in Live From New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. When he was hired, it was initially on a three-show basis, but he remembered creator Lorne Michaels telling him after his first night, “I guess you’re going to be moving to New York.” He felt a jolt of excitement that he’d impressed Michaels enough to be immediately hired, but then admitted, “I didn’t get any sketches for weeks after that.”
Overall, Murray felt it took him a little while to adjust to his role on the show and to zero in on what made him funny to the audience. In fact, he was so brutal about his own lack of progress in his first two months that, in his sixth episode, he said directly to the camera, “I’m a little bit concerned. I don’t think I’m making it on the show. I’m a funny guy, but I haven’t been so funny on the show. My friends say, ‘How come they’re giving you all those parts that aren’t funny?’ Well, it’s not the material, it’s me.”
Ultimately, Murray recovered from this dicey beginning on the show and became one of its most revered stars despite such a short tenure. Over the years, even though he went on to become one of the biggest comedy movie stars in Hollywood, Murray kept watching SNL every week.
In fact, when Murray was interviewed by Howard Stern in 2014 – 34 years after he left the show – he spoke incredibly fondly about the modern cast, which is sometimes compared unfavourably with the classic era likes of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, and Jane Curtain. “There’s been extraordinary talent, let’s get real,” Murray stated. “I mean, I don’t want to start listing names because there’s too many that I would forget.”
Most fascinatingly, though, when Murray was asked who he believed was the greatest SNL star in history, he didn’t pick one of his peers or even subsequent greats like Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, or Mike Myers. Instead, he mused, “I think Bill Hader probably did the best work anybody ever did on that show. It took him a little while to get going, but I think when he got rolling, it was extraordinary.”
This seemed to surprise longtime fans of the show, despite the future Barry star being a fixture on the show for eight years. During that time, he received the first ‘Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series’ Emmy nomination SNL had landed since Murphy in 1986 and created several indelible characters, including Stefon, the wonderfully flamboyant Weekend Update anchor.
However, digging a little deeper into Murray’s comments, perhaps he saw a kindred spirit in Hader, who also didn’t exactly hit the ground running at SNL. It also took the extremely talented comedian a while to find his voice, but once he did, he became one of the show’s shining lights. Through that lens, it makes perfect sense why Murray would be tickled by the prospect of Hader playing him in a movie.
