Wes Anderson won't address accusations against Bill Murray, says he's "part of my family"

Bill Murray is not in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, which is rare in Anderson’s filmography—he has, at least to some extent, appeared in almost all of the director’s movies—but the reason for that has nothing to do with the controversies that have followed Murray for the past year or so. Speaking with IndieWire, Anderson said that it was more or less a timing thing that prevented Murray from appearing in the new movie. He was originally supposed to play the character that Steve Carell plays in the movie, but Murray got COVID right before shooting and had to back out, but Anderson says they reconnected after the shoot and they drove from Spain (where he filmed Asteroid City) to France together.

As for the allegations against Murray, production on the film Being Mortal—which was supposed to be Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut—was shut down after someone filmed a complaint about Murray’s inappropriate behavior (which he later suggested was his attempt to do something “funny” that “wasn’t taken that way”), and that prompted Lucy Liu to eventually come forward with her own story about “unacceptable” comments Murray had made about her on the set of Charlie’s Angels. That then prompted Geena Davis to speak out about her own issues with Murray on the set of Quick Change in the ‘90s.

Anderson, in that IndieWire chat, declined to really address any of that, simply saying that he doesn’t “want to speak about somebody else’s experience.” But he did stand by Murray, saying that he’s “really part of my family” and was the one who “splashed the water” when his daughter was baptized. He also noted that his experience working with Murray is “so extensive” and that he’s been “a great supporter of me from the very beginning,” so take all of that however you choose to.