Bill Murray Reaches $100,000 Settlement Over On-Set Misconduct

Back in April, production on Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut Being Mortal was shut down after allegations of “inappropriate behavior” on set by cast member Bill Murray. Now, via a Puck article called “The Secret Bill Murray Settlement Revealed,” we have more details of what exactly happened.

According to Puck, Murray reached a $100,000 settlement with a “much younger” woman on the production staff after he allegedly straddled her and kissed her through a mask. Murray has remained tight-lipped about the incident, save for the following very brief statement: “I did something I thought was funny and it wasn’t taken that way.” The woman, however, was reportedly “horrified” and “interpreted his actions as entirely sexual.”

It’s not the first time Murray’s behavior towards female coworkers has been called into question. In her recently published memoir Dying Of Politeness, Geena Davis recalls an incident when the pair were filming Quick Change together and Murray greeted her “with something called The Thumper, a massage device he insists on using on her, despite her emphatically refusing.” Later, Murray allegedly screamed at her for being late, even though she was “waiting for her wardrobe” and continued to “scream at her as she hurries onto the set and even as she gets there, in front of hundreds of cast, crew, curious passers-by.”

“That was bad,” Davis told The Times. “The way he behaved at the first meeting… I should have walked out of that or profoundly defended myself, in which case I wouldn’t have got the part. I could have avoided that treatment if I’d known how to react or what to do during the audition. But, you know, I was so non-confrontational that I just didn’t.”

Lucy Liu has also called out Murray’s “inexcusable behavior” during their time together filming Charlie’s Angels.

“As we’re doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won’t get into the specifics, but it kept going on and on,” Liu recalled on the L.A. Times’ Asian Enough podcast in 2021. “I was not going to just sit there and take it. So, yes, I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it. Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”