Bill Murray is defending an alleged sexual misconduct that took place on the sets of Being Mortal.
The actor, 74, who was accused of misconduct by a younger female crew member in April 2022, went into details of the incident in a new interview with The New York Times on Saturday.
In Murray's experience, the actor felt "barbecued" despite his said attempts to "make peace" with the affected employee—referring to an over $100,000 settlement he reached with the accuser that October.
“I don’t go too many days or weeks without thinking of what happened. I dunno what prompted me to do it,” he told the Times. “It’s something that I had done to someone else before, and I thought it was funny, and every time it happened, it was funny.”
“I was wearing a mask, and I gave her a kiss, and she was wearing a mask. It wasn’t like I touched her, but it was just, I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn’t a stranger,” he recalled, adding that he ate lunch with the person “on various days of the week.”
For those unversed, the incident led to an internal on-set investigation, with the Aziz Ansari-led project—which was being produced by the Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures—suspended indefinitely.
A report published at the time claimed that Murray “straddled” the woman on a prop bed and gave her a kiss on the mouth through masks worn for on-set COVID safety protocol.
The actor assured that he learned from the experience, telling the outlet “You can teach an old dog new tricks."
"But it was a great disappointment, because I thought I knew someone, and I did not. I certainly thought it was light. I thought it was funny. To me, it’s still funny, the idea that you could give someone a kiss with a mask on. It’s still stupid. It’s all it was,” he added.