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A spate of celebrities are coming forward with claims about Bill Murray’s true nature.

The iconic actor is not as nice as he comes across, it appears, and has a rather dark side lurking beneath it all.

“They might be surprised to hear [the stories about Murray] if they haven’t heard stories about him previously, because he comes off as an affable, fun-loving guy, and many times he was or could be,” Geena Davis told Vanity Fair in an interview about her newly released memoir, Dying of Politeness.

But she said as soon as she experienced his true nature, “everything about him after that was completely colored by knowing what lurks within”.

Davis makes the accusation that Murray sexually harassed and verbally abused her during the filming of 1990’s Quick Change:

In her book, Davis alleges that prior to filming Murray tested if she would be “compliant” by requesting that she lie on a bed and try a massage device called “the Thumper.” Writes Davis, “I said no multiple times, but he wouldn’t relent.” During shooting, Murray allegedly screamed at Davis and others on set.

She revealed that this kind of behaviour was rampant on set and suggested it was a means of control:

“I was watching him tear apart somebody one day on set,” she said. “He finished, and the other person went away, and he turned around sort of self-satisfied and I said, ‘Man, I can’t wait for you to do that to me again, because now I know how I’ll react.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I don’t have to. You behaved after that.’ So he thought he has to go off on somebody to make sure they ‘behave.’ Whatever his idea of ‘behaving’ is—not challenging him, I guess.”

Davis has decided to disclose Murray’s alleged behaviour because of the way she was forced to normalise it for so long.

It turns out, it is just one instance in a string of misconduct claims made against the 72-year-old actor. The Guardian reported that actor Seth Green claimed Murray once dropped him in a bin “by his ankles” when he was a child, leaving him crying and traumatised.

Green said the alleged incident occurred backstage at Saturday Night Live when he was nine years old:

“[Murray] saw me sitting on the arm of this chair and made a big fuss about me being in his seat,” Green said. “And I was like, ‘That is absurd. I am sitting on the arm of this couch. There are several lengths of this sofa. Kindly eff off.’ And he was like, ‘That’s my chair.’”

Green’s mother suggested to her son that he move for Murray, but he refused. “He picked me up by my ankles,” Green said. “Held me upside down … He dangled me over a trash can and he was like, ‘The trash goes in the trash can.’ And I was screaming, and I swung my arms, flailed wildly, full contact with his balls. He dropped me in the trash can, the trash can falls over. I was horrified. I ran away, hid under the table in my dressing room and just cried.”

It seems the SNL set was where Murray released a lot of his fury. Per The New York Post, Rob Schneider claimed that Murray wasn’t a big fan of the SNL cast when he hosted the NBC sketch comedy show in the ’90s:

“He was super nice to fans, he wasn’t very nice to us,” the 58-year-old “The Animal” star revealed during a Thursday guest spot on SiriusXM’s “Faction Talk,” hosted by Jim Norton and Sam Roberts. “He hated us on ‘Saturday Night Live’ when he hosted. Absolutely hated us.”

In another instance, Schneider referred to Murray’s hate as “naked rage” and said most of it was directed towards Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, who worked with Murray from 1993:

“He hated Chris Farley with a passion,” said Schneider. “Like he was just seething looking at him.” He speculated that Murray despised the “Tommy Boy” star’s lifestyle, which Schneider compared to that of John Belushi, another rotund funnyman who was close pals with Murray when they were on “SNL” together. Tragically, both Belushi and Farley died of drug overdoses at 33 years of age, Fox News reported.

“I want to believe that it’s because Chris thought it was cool to be Belushi, who [was] his friend who he saw die [in 1982], that he thought it was cool to be that out of control,” postulated Schneider. “That’s my interpretation, but I don’t really know.”

Schneider said Murray “really hated Sandler, too,” saying they weren’t really into each other’s grooves.

Even more revelatory is the fact that Murray’s on-set antics aren’t limited to SNL.

The latest damning accusation against Murray comes from a female actor who accused him of “kissing” and “straddling” her on the set of the movie Being Mortal:

The actor addressed the incident in a CNBC interview, calling it a “difference of opinion.” Murray continued, “The world is different than it was when I was a little kid. What I thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily what is funny now. Things change and the times change. It’s important to me to figure it out. And the most important thing is that it’s best for the other person.”

As a result of the allegations, the filming was suspended while Murray reportedly paid the unnamed staffer $100 000 in a settlement that also apparently included a nondisclosure agreement and the waiving of any legal claims the employee could make against the movie producers.

[sources:vanityfair&nypost&guardian]