Saturday Night Live has been on the air for an astonishing 46 years, and it’s had its fair share of on-screen blips and behind-the-scenes drama. But according to Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, who were both part of SNL’s inaugural cast in 1975 and went on to have successful comedy careers, one of the worst fights in the history of the show was in those early years. Curtin and Newman appeared on an episode of Watch What Happens Live recently and talked all things SNL with host Andy Cohen. When a fan called in to ask about an infamous 1978 fight between Chevy Chase and Bill Murray that Newman, Curtin, and fellow cast member Gilda Radner witnessed, the conversation took a serious turn. Read on to learn more about the brawl that Newman described as “very sad and painful and awful.”
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Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman said the fight between Chevy Chase and Bill Murray was a clash of “two bull mooses.”
The fight between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase ramped up when Chase, who had left SNL in Feb. 1978—on apparently not such excellent terms—returned to the show later that year to guest host. Some regular cast members were not happy to see Chase coming back in the vaunted star spot.
"It was that sad kind of tension that you would get in a family, and everybody goes to their corners because they don't want to have to deal with the tension," Curtin told the WWHL audience on June 17. "It was uncomfortable."
But where the bulk of the cast let the tension simmer just below, Bill Murray—who had been brought onto SNL to replace Chase—approached it head-on. "You could understand, you know, there were these two bull mooses going at each other, so the testosterone was surging, and stuff happens,” Curtin continued.
"I think they both knew the one thing that they could say to one another that would hurt the most, and that's what I think incited it," Newman added. "It was very sad and painful and awful."
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The notorious fight also involved John Belushi.
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesAccording to the book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, the hurtful thing Murray told Chase was that everyone hated him. Chase reportedly then told Murray his face was so pockmarked, it looked like a moon landing spot for Neil Armstrong. Murray then allegedly sniped back a rude comment about Chase’s sex life with then-wife Jacqueline Carlin.
It got ugly enough that the pair came to blows in John Belushi’s dressing room. At one point, Belushi himself was hurt in the scuffle.
The physical fight was short lived, however; moments after it began, Chase had to jump out on stage and get the live show started.
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Murray and Chase have somewhat made up over the years.
Taylor Hill/Getty Images)Just a year and a half after the pre-show brawl, Murray starred with Chase in the 1980 hit movie Caddyshack, though the pair only actually share one scene. Chase and Murray appeared on SNL together to promote Caddyshack’s release in Feb. 1980 and did a musical number together.
Over the years, their relationship has continued to improve by fits and starts. In a 2008 interview Chase did with shock jock Howard Stern, he said: "We've never been close, but we've been very friendly, we play golf together. I think we've made an effort over the years to get to know each other better and to put that stuff behind."
He also told Stern that he essentially blamed John Belushi—whom he called an instigator of the feud—for coming to blows with Murray. Belushi, according to Chase, “had been quite jealous of my rise to fame. I found out later, John said things to Bill about me that simply hadn’t occurred. So he had already worked Bill up a little bit.”
“And I was probably a little full of myself after a year of fame or whatever,” he added.
"It was really a Hollywood fight, a 'Don't touch my face!' kind of thing," Murray told Empire in 2012 of the 1978 brawl. "It was an Oedipal thing, a rupture. Because we all felt mad he had left us, and somehow I was the anointed avenging angel who had to speak for everyone. But Chevy and I are friends now. It's all fine."
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But Chase continues to cultivate a reputation for being difficult.
Tommaso Boddi/FilmMagic via Getty ImagesAs Chase readily admits now, he struggled a lot with drug and alcohol in the ‘70s and ‘80s, though his substance use didn’t stop him from becoming a well-known comedic actor in his own right. In the ‘80s, Chase led several successful movie franchises, including Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s, and Fletch.
But his most recent high profile role—as Pierce Hawthorne on the CBS show Community—may have put the nail in the coffin of his reputation. Chase abruptly left the cast during the show’s fifth season after Community creator Dan Harmon said Chase was difficult to work with, and co-star Donald Glover accused the actor of making racially insensitive comments. In a 2018 New Yorker interview, Glover said Chase told him, “People think you’re funnier because you’re Black.”
A cameo appearance on SNL that year didn’t help Chase’s reputation. While there, according to a 2018 Washington Post profile of the actor, Chase told the writers that he wasn’t impressed with SNL these days. “First of all, between you and me and a lamppost, jeez, I don’t want to put down Lorne [Michaels, the show’s creator] or the cast, but I’ll just say, maybe off the record, I’m amazed that Lorne has gone so low. I had to watch a little of it, and I just couldn’t ******* believe it.”
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