Bill Murray reveals the SNL50 moments that made him 'surprisingly emotional': 'I wept 3 times'

SNL50 was a poignant experience for fans of Saturday Night Live's earliest seasons — especially Bill Murray.

The Lost in Translation actor reflected on attending the 50th anniversary of the seminal comedy show during in an interview with Sway Calloway on SiriusXM's Sway in the Morning. "It was surprisingly emotional," Murray said. "I wept three times in the show. It really got to me."

Calloway asked his guest, "What did you weep for?"

Murray began by deflecting with a joke. "Oh, there were sketches that were dying," he said. "No, I'm kidding."

The actor then clarified that he was overwhelmed by the memory of some of his SNL costars who have died. "I was watching, and there's a lot of video and history that they're showing," he said. "And I didn't see it coming, but there was Gilda [Radner] up there dancing with Steve Martin."

Murray was referring to the moment in the montage celebrating 50 years of physical comedy in the anniversary special, which highlighted the "Dancing in the Dark" sketch from season 3 in 1978. That sketch saw the two comedians silently dance together across multiple areas of Studio 8H, and was replayed in the 1989 episode that Martin hosted just hours after Radner died from ovarian cancer at age 42.

"I remember being there watching them rehearse that dance number for days and days and days and days," Murray said of the sketch. "I was crazy about Gilda, and I sort of came apart. I was sitting there in the dressing room with a bunch of people and I couldn't stop it."

Murray later recalled another moment that brought him to tears during the anniversary special. "And then there's the film that Tom Schiller made with [John] Belushi visiting the Saturday Night Live graveyard and seeing all his compatriots dead," he said.

That sketch, "Don't Look Back in Anger," also aired in 1978 during season 3 and saw Belushi wear old-age makeup and read the tombstones of the other SNL cast members before asking, "Why me? Why did I live so long?" and breaking into a dance. Belushi was actually the first SNL cast member to die, passing away at age 33 from a drug overdose in 1982, just three years after he left the show.

Murray said he was moved by the dark irony of the sketch "John was the first to go," he said. "So to see that, and to see him — see, I could go [cry] now, just thinking about it — to see that sort of foreshadowing that Schiller sort of intuited to make that, and to miss him."

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The comedian went on to praise his former costar for supporting his fellow performers. "John was a guy who really made a lot of careers possible," Murray explained. "He dragged all of us out from Chicago. John Belushi did that. He was the first to come out, and he was a bold guy."

"He came to New York, and he started an off-Broadway show called Lemmings," Murray continued. "He was like the funniest, scariest guy in New York, and he said, 'All these New York actors can't get it done. I got some people.' And he brought out Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis, and Gilda, myself. A lot of people slept on John Belushi's couch until they got their feet."

Watch Murray's full Sway in the Morning interview above.