With each decade, there are certain films that remain at holy grail status for years to come. And so was the case for the 2000 action comedy remake of Charlie’s Angels.
The film itself—starring Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore—was so successful that it was joined by a sequel three years later, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. However, it didn’t stop fans noticing that the character of Bosley, which was first played by Bill Murray, was replaced with the late Bernie Mac.
Turns out, the choice to replace Murray may have been due to a “clash” between himself and Liu.
Speaking to the LA Times, Liu revealed that she experienced an on-set altercation with Murray, adding that she felt proud of herself for standing up to him.
When the interviewer informed the 52-year-old of her feminist icon status, thanks to how she handled herself on the Charlie’s Angels set when forced into an uncomfortable situation, she took the opportunity to explain the order of events further.
“I feel like some of those stories are private,” she said. “But I will say, when we started to rehearse this scene, which was all of us in the agency, we had taken the weekend to rework that particular scene and Bill Murray was not able to come because he had to attend some family gathering.”
“So it was everyone else, and we just made the scene more fluid. I wish I had more to do with it but I didn’t, because I was the last one cast and I probably had the least amount of privilege in terms of creatively participating at that time,” Liu revealed.
She continued, “As we’re doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won’t get into the specifics, but it kept going on and on. I was, like, ‘Wow, he seems like he’s looking straight at me.’ I couldn’t believe that [the comments] could be towards me, because what do I have to do with anything majorly important at that time?”
“I literally do the look around my shoulder thing, like, who is he talking to behind me? I say, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you talking to me?’” she said, adding: “And clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication.”
Liu also explained that the language Murray had used against her was “inexcusable and unacceptable, and I was not going to just sit there and take it.”
“So, yes, I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it,” she admitted. “Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”
And apparently, Liu wasn’t the only one who witnessed Murray’s apparent verbal abuse on set. The Why Women Kill star went on to recall moments, years after the incident, where she bumped into several crew members from the Charlie’s Angels set while working on a different project. The crew members thanked her for her past actions, admitting they were “grateful” for how she called out Murray for his poor behaviour.
“I have nothing against Bill Murray at all. I’ve seen him since then at a SNL reunion, and he came up to me and was perfectly nice. But I’m not going to sit there and be attacked,” she said.
She continued: “I don’t want to be that person that is not going to speak up for myself and stand by the only thing that I have, which is my dignity and self-respect,”
“Because in the end, we all end up in the same place as time goes on. Nobody is immortal. But in that time, no matter what happens between now and whatever career choices I make or whatever life decisions I make, I will walk away with my dignity.”
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