Another Wes Anderson movie, another stacked ensemble cast: such is the case for “Asteroid City,” the director’s latest. But Anderson fans will notice a regular of his conspicuously absent from his latest film: Bill Murray, who’s had parts in each of Anderson’s past nine movies. So why wasn’t Murray in “Asteroid City”? Well, he came down with COVID-19 just days before he was supposed to show up on set in Spain. But Anderson couldn’t stand not having him be part of the feature somehow. The New Yorker has the scoop.
“Normally, I don’t think it’s such a nice idea to tell everyone the person who didn’t end up in the movie,” Anderson told The New Yorker. “But Bill got covid in Ireland, and it was four days before he was supposed to work.” Murray would have played a motel manager in the titular desert town, now played by Steve Carell in the film, who Anderson scrambled to cast on short notice. And given his ensemble’s busy schedule, the director couldn’t postpone production to shoehorn Murray in somewhere after he had recovered. “The movie was a jigsaw puzzle of actors’ schedules, so we couldn’t wait,” Anderson continued. “We were extremely lucky that Steve Carell said yes—and was perfect in the part.”
But even though Murray wasn’t in “Asteroid City” any longer, he showed up on set anyway, leading to Anderson trying to figure out how he could use the actor’s presence. “I kept trying to think of something for him, but you can’t really just add a new character into the movie,” said the director. As Murray hung around the set giving pep talks to other actors, Anderson cooked up a part for his regular. Murray would play Jock Larkings, head of the Larkins Corporation, a fictitious aeronautics company in the film. And since “Asteroid City” has a play-within-a-film framing device, it turns out Murray plays two characters in the film: Tab Whitney, the actor who plays Larkins. Anderson even had the “Asteroid City” costume department make an outfit for the role.
But Anderson never found a way to integrate Larkings/Whitney into the film, so he and Murray came up with something else. The director, Murray, and Jason Schwartzman, who plays war photographer Augie Steenbeck (and Jones Hall, the actor playing Steenbeck) in “Asteroid City,” shot a short scene in the style of a promotional trailer. Think of it as a pitch a studio head or director would make to entice financiers to budget a new feature. So in a way, Murray is in “Asteroid City” after all, ironically playing a character cut from the film. “We made this very peculiar thing that is just a spontaneous creation before the set was going to be struck down,” Anderson said about the promo with Murray. “It was the last thing we did. And then we put all our things in the golf cart and drove off into the sunset.”
And The New Yorker has the promo with Murray to watch exclusively on their website. So check it out: a promotional extra for a movie-within-a-movie, based on a fictitious play, from Anderson’s own American Emperical Pictures. “It’s an odd little piece, but it does sort of say something I feel about the movie,” said the director. “Asteroid City” is in theaters now.