The iconic Bill Murray role Tom Hanks was too wholesome to take on: “I always play nice”
In his career, Bill Murray has played plenty of narcissistic characters who coast through life on charm while treating people poorly. Naturally, though, because he works in Hollywood movies, these characters tend to learn their lesson and resolve to be a better person by the end. Murray’s real skill has always been in making the audience believe that he’s the same guy at the end of the movie as he was at the start, and they’re in on the joke of him finding an unlikely redemption. One of his most beloved characters would have been incredibly different if the director’s first choice had been cast, though: the quintessentially “nice” Tom Hanks.
In the early 1990s, actor/director Harold Ramis was on the lookout for his next project. The erstwhile Egon Spengler hadn’t directed a film since 1986’s Club Paradise, and had taken some time off from acting after Ghostbusters II in 1989. When he came across a script by an unknown writer named Danny Rubin, though, he and his producing partner Trevor Albert recognised it as an “unexpected gem” after reading only 20 pages.
Ramis had become interested in the concepts of redemption and people discovering their purposes in life, and he felt Groundhog Day was the perfect way to explore them in a funny context. To play the part of the cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors, who learns how to be a better man while stuck in a time loop surrounding Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania’s bizarre annual event, Ramis had the perfect star in mind: Hanks.
Unfortunately, by that point, Hanks felt he had already been pigeonholed as a “nice guy” in movies – a perception that would only increase over the coming decades. He felt there would be no drama in Groundhog Day if he was cast as Phil because everyone watching the film would be convinced of his redemption from minute one. “Audiences would have been sitting there waiting for me to become nice, because I always play nice,” he reasoned in 2009.
After Hanks turned the movie down, another big star did the same: Michael Keaton. The Batman star later revealed he didn’t really “get” the script, although he admitted Phil “sounds like the kind of wry, sardonic, glib young man I’ve played.” In truth, the ideal person for the role had already worked with Ramis many times and was one of his closest friends: Murray. As Hanks charmingly put it, “Bill’s such a miserable SOB on and offscreen, you didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Ramis ultimately agreed, saying in a Making Of documentary, “He seems to come by the nasty part quite honestly, the self-centeredness and all. And Bill Murray really does understand that character. I mean, he’s not a movie star by accident. He understands vanity and self-centeredness.”
If any of this sounds like Hanks and Ramis don’t think Murray is much of a nice guy in real life, well, that’s because he isn’t. Murray has always had a complicated reputation in Hollywood and has been accused by many of being arrogant, difficult to work with, angry, and disruptive. He even fell out with Ramis on the set of Groundhog Day so badly that they didn’t speak again until his old friend was on his deathbed. In a bittersweet way, though, Murray’s “Murrayness” truly did make him ideal for playing Connors – whether Ramis liked it or not.
