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Geena Davisis reflecting on another uncomfortable interaction she had withBill Murraydecades ago.
In an interview with theBritish outletipublished Friday, Davis, 66, recalled an appearance she and Murray, 72, made onThe Arsenio Hall Showback in 1990 to promote their filmQuick Change.During the interview, Murray repeatedly ran his hands up and down Davis' bare arm and at one point pulled down her dress strap.
“Oh, you saw?” Davis asked theireporterafter being reminded of the moment. “Isn’t it stunning? It’s awful.”
In her new bookDying of Politeness: A Memoir, Davis recalled being introduced to theGhostbustersactor in a hotel suite for an audition, where Murray allegedly “insisted” on using a massage device on the actress.
Davis — who recently told PEOPLEshe has “never spoken about [working with Murray] publicly,"— said in theiinterview that she did not realize she had recounted the hotel-room audition during theArsenio Hall Showappearance.
“I forgot that,” Davis told the outlet. “Telling it that way, just as a humorous anecdote, I must have thought, ‘Well, it’s ultimately funny or makes a good story,’ when in fact it was so devastating.”
During the interview with Hall, Davis told the talk show host that her audition forQuick Change"was a lot like this, in fact,” as Murray reached his left arm around her and ran his hand up and down her arm. “Really?” asked Hall. “He touched you a lot in the audition?” Davis responded with a smile, “Yeah,” as the audience laughed.
“Is this a story you want to tell?” Hall asked, to which Davis responded with a laugh, “I’m not sure … can we, like, back up?” When Hall joked thatDavis' then-husband Jeff Goldblum"is watching," Murray said, “It’s all cool with Jeff. What we have is so strong. Jeff understands.”
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“So he gets out this Thumper thing and he says, ‘You should try this, I’m going to massage your back with this thing,’ and I’m thinking ‘No way,’ " Davis said in the 1990 interview. “I’m like, this is part of how I’m going to be tough, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let him touch me with this thing.”
“And, you know, cut to five minutes later and I’m laying on the couch and he’s [using the machine] on my back with this thing,” she added.
Also in that interview, Murray called Davis “a very nice person” then added “and get a load of that dress.”
Davis toldithat situations like that would cause her to feel ashamed or blame herself. Now, though, “I don’t feel like that anymore. I really, really do recognize that it wasn’t my fault.”
A rep for Murray did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Bill Murray.Stefanie Rex/picture alliance via Getty
In Davis' memoir, the actress wrote that she “said no multiple times, but he wouldn’t relent,” of the hotel-room moment with Murray. “I would have had to yell at him and cause a scene if I was to get him to give up trying to force me to do it; the other men in the room did nothing to make it stop. I realized with profound sadness that I didn’t yet have the ability to withstand this onslaught — or to simply walk out.”
In the end, Davis wrote that Murray “placed the thing on my back for a total of about two seconds.”
Later, when on the New York set of the film, Davis said Murray verbally berated her in front of the crew as she waited on a wardrobe adjustment. “There were easily more than 300 people there — and Murray was still screaming at me, for all to see and hear,” she wrote.
“For publicity, I saw him after we made the movie, but other than that, I haven’t seen him or spoken to him,” Davis recently told PEOPLE. “I figure it’s sort of rather universally known that he could be difficult to work with. And so I don’t feel like I’m busting him in a way that will necessarily shock him. I think he knows very well the way he can behave.”
Dying of Politenessis out now wherever books are sold.
source: people.com
