Last night, Bill Murray opened up about his early experiences on SNL, candidly addressing the challenges he faced as a new cast member.
Murray recounts a pivotal moment during his third season when he realized that his anxieties were shared by other new cast members, emphasizing that developing the necessary skills for SNL often takes time.
He reflects on the increased competition among a larger current cast, contrasting it with his early days when opportunities for exposure were greater.
Despite the challenges, Murray underscores the importance of even the smallest roles in fostering growth and learning.
A.I. GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
[0:00] Here's just a clip of the beginning of you apologizing to the audience for the work you've been doing on the show.
[0:06] Hello, I'm Bill Murray. You can call me Billy, but around here everybody just calls me the new guy. I want to thank the producer, Lorne Michaels, for urging me to speak with you directly. You see, I'm a little bit concerned. I don't think I'm making it on the show. I'm a funny guy, but I haven't been so funny on the show. My friends say,
[0:26] how come they're giving you all those parts that aren't funny? Well it's not the material it's me and that was sort of known yeah did you feel, did you feel a difference after that sketch well I felt like I was really being myself right you know so I felt like they got to see who people got to see who I really was I really meant all of that yeah you know and I meant to be funny and I meant to be like knowing how I was missing you know like spinning at 32 RPM. It was, I remember when I started the show, I had this real anxiety about reading.
[1:03] Deep diving into the history of the show. 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
[1:14] here has the same, nobody hits the ground. I mean, with rare exception. It's really true. And it's people talk about Saturday Night Live and I still hear people say, oh, the only good time was the first group and i well that's not true you know the first group was the most exciting group because i was brand new but there's a learning curve that goes with doing the show and it takes you about a year or a year and even more to learn how to do it and when we did it there were only seven of us on the show and now there's 20 25 it's a lot people fighting to be on the show and you don't get enough reps you don't get enough playing time to to really get because it turns Isn't that second plumber ultimately is something you're learning? Like, even second plumber, you're taking something away from it that is valuable. That's right. You know, you're getting some playing time as second plumber, but, so it's, so I, 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 show, Sonny Zine's ever written.
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