Bill Murray Nearly Brought Tina Fey to Tears With ‘SNL 50’ Pep Talk
We are now just three days away from the highly anticipated, star-studded and Tina Fey back into Liz Lemon mode.
Don't Miss
In a t appearance with her touring partner a staffer on Aziz Ansari's shuttered directorial debut.
“Going back to being on the writing staff, basically, I immediately regressed to like — I was just like, so grouchy,” Fey said of her return to work at 30 Rockefeller Plaza nearly 20 years after she first left Saturday Night Live in order to satirize her time there with 30 Rock. “By the way, I’m responsible for, like, two minutes of content,” Fey added of her contributions to SNL 50.
Fey itted that, as soon as she was back on the big show, she was, once again, wearing her old crummy clothes and eating garbage foods, and her mood was as low as the SNL schedule typically sets its employees’ depression levels. “Then, something amazing happened,” Fey recalled. “I was there the other night in a meeting with everybody … and everyone was just like, you know, grinding down, like, ‘Okay, what’s it going to be,’ this and that, and then an angel appeared in the form of Bill Murray, (who) just wandered into the meeting.”
“He came in, and he was in this, like, incredibly wonderful mood, and he was just like, ‘Hey guys, what’s going on in here? Maybe open a window, you seem like you’re all about to cry!'” Fey said of Murray’s welcome interruption. “Then, he just gave us this pep talk, and I could have started crying because this was the pep talk that I have been dreaming of since I was a kid watching Meatballs.”
“He's just like, ‘The show’s gonna be amazing! I’m so excited! I’m seeing everybody at rehearsals, I feel like we’re all brothers and sisters,’” Fey continued of Murray’s motivational speech. “I kept waiting for it to turn into a bit, and it never did. He just was like, ‘It’s going to be wonderful!’”
Thankfully, the SNL giant was in a good mood and on his best behavior, and Murray was able to lift the spirits of the hall-of-famers who put together this Sunday’s special. It’s just too bad that Chevy Chase didn’t pick the same moment to burst in — an inspiring speech can lighten the mood, but the best way to really get a group of comedy writers hyped would be to have them watch a couple of octogenarians throw hands.
