The one role Bill Murray will always regret not playing: “The only one I wanted I didn’t get”
It’s been a long time since Bill Murray has had to audition for anything, given his status as one of modern comedy’s foremost favourites, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to cast him in a role.
For one thing, he’s famously difficult to track down. If any producer or filmmaker wants to hire Murray for a part, then the first thing they need to do is find him. That’s nowhere near as easy as it might seem, and even if they do manage to locate the elusive actor, there are no guarantees he’ll say yes.
Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and Jim Jarmusch are about the only auteurs who never have to worry about being rejected, and it’s not as if Murray goes out of his way to beg and plead for anyone to give him a job. However, long before his mystique was established, he was desperate for a part he didn’t get.
Based on the stories surrounding Murray’s eccentric approach to his career, the projects he chooses, and how long that’s been his preferred method of navigating the business, it’s hard to imagine him going out of his way to impress a director and prove himself the perfect candidate.
The Saturday Night Live alum doesn’t harbour too many regrets from a half-century-long film and television odyssey, but there are always exceptions to the rule. Based on their wildly varying trajectories, envisioning Murray in a role played by Mel Gibson and vice versa feels like a stretch, only for one such situation to stand out as a missed opportunity he’s regretted ever since.
“The only role I wanted I didn’t get: The Year of Living Dangerously by Peter Weir,” the Ghostbusters star admitted in a Reddit AMA. “I wasn’t a big shot. Mel Gibson lived in Australia. I’d been to Indonesia, and I thought I understood that movie. When I saw it, I was like, ‘Damn!’ That was the only one I wanted I didn’t get.”
To be fair, it’s easy to see why he didn’t get the gig. The adaptation of CJ Koch’s novel was directed by an Australian and scripted by three Australians. It also featured an Australian main character who, in Gibson, was played by an actor who was raised in the country and resided there at the time.
With that in mind, it made perfect sense for Weir to cast his eyes closer to home at the expense of Hollywood, especially when Murray was best known for his comedy work at the time. Not only that, but he’d only been in a handful of features when principal photography began, almost all of which were designed to make audiences laugh.
Still, it would have been fascinating to see Murray’s take on a hotshot reporter attempting to navigate Indonesia’s political turmoil while embarking on an affair with an assistant working at the British embassy, but it wasn’t to be.
