Lucy Liu Elaborates on Altercation With Billy Murray on Charlie’s Angels’ Set

In 2000, almost 20 years before the most recent take on the property, Lucy Liu starred alongside Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s Angels. Bill Murray co-starred as Bosley, the liaison between Charlie and his angels. There have long been rumors about an altercation taking place between Murray and Liu on set early in the filming process. Those rumors came up again recently when film producer Shaun O’Banion, who was a production assistant on the film at the time, took to Twitter to explain what he saw of the altercation, stating that Murray took it upon himself to rewrite a scene and then belittled Liu by calling her a TV actress.

Liu is now offering her version of the story. She explained what happened on an episode of The Los Angeles Times‘ Asian Enough podcast.

“I feel like some of those stories are private,” Liu 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.

“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?’ And clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication.”

“Some of the language 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 said. “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.”

Murray provided his own comments on the spat to Entertainment Weekly in 2009, though in much vaguer terms. “Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me,” he said. “When our relationship is professional, and you’re not getting that done, forget it.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

(h/t Yahoo)