How Jack Nicholson’s retirement saved Bill Murray from embarrassment: “I’m just not very organised”
One of the most famous things about Bill Murray and the mythology that’s built up around him over the last half a century is that he’s a famously difficult person to get hold of, which would have left him severely red-faced were it not for Jack Nicholson’s disinterest in returning to acting.
The three-time Academy Award-winning legend has been enjoying his self-imposed exile from Hollywood since his Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good As It Gets collaborator James L Brooks’ romantic comedy How Do You Know was released in December 2010.
There have been a couple of notable attempts to coax Nicholson back into the limelight, but if Tom Cruise couldn’t do it when he pitched his A Few Good Men co-star with the raucous-sounding action comedy El Presidente, then there aren’t many in the industry who stand a chance.
Kristen Wiig wouldn’t immediately jump to mind as one of them, though, but it was nonetheless announced in early 2017 that the Saturday Night Live alum would be starring with Nicholson in the English-language remake of writer and director Maren Ade’s German dramedy Toni Erdmann.
However, the part could have been Murray’s if it wasn’t for his lack of organisational skills. The actor, who doesn’t have an agent or a mobile phone and can only be reached through very specific channels, admitted to CNBC that Wiig had contacted him about playing the curmudgeonly title character in the American version of Toni Erdmann, and he was keen.
“I’m in trouble with myself because Kristen Wiig, who I think is so wonderful, sent me something and said, ‘Would you look at this thing?’” Murray explained. “And I’m just not very organised. “For a while, I lost it, and then I found it, but I didn’t get around to watching this thing that she wanted me to watch.”
Of course, the thing Wiig wanted Murray to wrap his eyeballs around the original Toni Erdmann. When the Ghostbusters favourite eventually made the time to witness the story of a woman who agrees to reluctantly spend time with her estranged father and the hijinks that ensue, the opportunity had already passed him by.
When Murray reached out to Wiig to signal that he was onboard with the prospect of playing the part, he discovered that it had already been filled. “She said, ‘Well, Jack Nicholson took the job,’” he recalled. “You know, that guy’s a poacher, he’ll take anything. So I think I’m out of that one.”
Nicholson had beaten Murray to the punch and secured top billing in the Toni Erdmann remake for the sole reason that the latter had misplaced the DVD Wiig had sent him in hopes of convincing him to play her father in the movie.
It would have been a source of real embarrassment if that was how he lost out to one of the all-time greats, although Murray’s blushes were spared when not only did Nicholson eventually drop out of the project, but the film never ended up happening at all.
