Bill Murray is defending his late Royal Tenenbaums co-star Gene Hackman from the film’s “punk” director Wes Anderson.
Murray co-starred in Anderson’s seminal 2001 domestic dramedy, which starred Hackman as a ne’er-do-well father who coaxes his extended brood home to their New York brownstone by lying that he has a terminal illness. Due to their drastically different styles, Hackman reportedly butted heads with Anderson on set. The feud has been coyly alluded to by the cast and crew, including Anderson himself, but hard confirmation has remained elusive.
“He was a tough nut, Gene Hackman. But he was really good,” Murray told the Associated Press following the actor’s tragic, unexpected death earlier this week. “And he was really difficult, we can say it now, but he was a tough guy,” Murray continued.
The disagreements between Hackman and Anderson stemmed from the actor rebuking the director’s exacting, hyper-controlled style. Hackman was an actor known for feeling his emotions in the moment, and while he wouldn’t exactly improvise he would change his line delivery or action depending on how the scene moved him.
Anderson, who was 32 when he made Tenenbaums, delivers specific line readings to his actors and expects them to follow without fail, something Hackman balked at. Hackman ultimately earned rave reviews for the film—it’s largely considered to be his final great performance—but throughout filming he made no secret of the fact that he thought his performance would amount to a disastrous portrayal that would go down in infamy, all due to Anderson.
“Older, great actors do not give young directors much of a chance,” Murray told the AP. “They’re really rough on them, and Gene was really rough on Wes.” The Ghostbusters star added that he would often intervene to defend Anderson’s vision, having worked with the director before (and since) to great success. “I used to kind of step in there and just try to defend my friend.”
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Murray later elaborated on the story during an interview on The Drew Barrymore Show (via Variety), saying he “sympthatize[d]” with Hackman as a veteran actor.
“I sympathize with Gene because to him, Wes Anderson was just a punk kid and Gene’s made some of the greatest American movies. So he was a little irritable,” he said. “He had to work with children, dogs, Kumar [Pallana, who played the Tenenbaum family butler], who was like an absolute mystery to all of us anyway. They put [Hackman] in very challenging positions to work, and so he just felt a lot of responsibility and kept thinking, ‘What am I doing here with these people?’ But the performance he gives is brilliant. And I watched him, and I suffered with him because I saw what he was going through.”
The Royal Tenenbaums is streaming on Disney+ with a subscription.
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