Bill Murray Explains the "Apology" SNL Sketch He Made After Joining the Season 2 Cast
The Riff Raff actor looked back at his early SNL days during a recent Late Night with Seth Meyers appearance.
Bill Murray is one of the most famous cast members to come out of Saturday Night Live. First joining SNL in its second season in 1977, Murray departed in 1980 after winning an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety Series for his work on the series. He subsequently became a member of the Five-Timers Club.
But in a February 12 Late Night with Seth Meyers interview, Murray revisited a Season 2 sketch titled "Bill Murray's Apology" and explained what prompted the freshman cast member to explain himself live on air.
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Bill Murray delivered an on-air apology during his first season on SNL: "I really meant all of that"
Though Murray started out strong on SNL, he told Seth Meyers that by season's end, he felt like he wasn't living up to his comic potential. So much so that he starred in a sketch on the May 12, 1977 episode in which he apologized to the audience for not being funny enough on the show.
The first day he was hired, Murray recalled, "they wrote me three great sketches that I killed. I was great. I was really good!"
"But then that was it. No one ever wrote a sketch for me for, like, seven months or so," he continued. "I was the second cop, the second FBI man, the second plumber. I had like a line or two lines a week."
The Oscar nominee revealed to Seth Meyers that his apology sketch was "a long time coming, because the writers just don't trust you. They don't know you, and they want their material on with somebody that they trust."
"Did you feel a difference after that sketch?" asked the Late Night Host.
"Well, I felt like I was really being myself, you know? So I felt like people got to see who I really was. I really meant all of that. You know, and I meant to be funny, and I meant to be, knowing how I was missing... like spinning at 32 RPM," Murray confessed.
Seth Meyers relates to Bill Murray's experience of starting at SNL
Murray's on-air apology not only changed the actor's course on the show, it also helped future SNL cast members like Meyers.
"I remember when I started the show, I had this real anxiety about deep-diving into the history," Meyers told Murray. "And then it wasn't until, like, third season that I read one of the books that talked about that moment, and talked about how you felt in your early days on the show."
"And it was such a great relief for me to realize, 'Oh, everybody who comes through here — nobody hits the ground running... with rare exceptions,'" said Meyers, as Murray added, "There's a learning curve that goes with doing the show, and it takes you about a year or even more to learn how to do it."
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Bill Murray teases SNL50: The Anniversary Special "could have one of the funniest scenes ever written"
With the SNL50: The Anniversary Special only days away, Murray looked back at the rich legacy of the late-night series, telling Meyers how "there's been great, great material and great, great actors and actresses on that show all 50 years."
"And I really believe that this week's show could have one of the funniest scenes ever written," he teased. "The writers keep coming and the actors keep developing and getting better and better. So it's really a landmark television program."
