Jane Curtin & Laraine Newman recall Bill Murray & Chevy Chase's 'SNL' backstage fight

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 6/18/21

Over 40 years have passed since Bill Murray and Chevy Chase's backstage brawl at Saturday Night Live, but people are apparently still starving for details—or at least, one woman named Ivy from Connecticut.

Thursday's Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen featured Ivy asking Laraine Newman about the infamous fight that took place in the late John Belushi's dressing room when Chase returned to host this February 1978 episode after leaving his role as a cast member in 1976.

"I think Jane [Curtin] and Gilda [Radner] and I both witnessed it, but you know, it was very sad and painful and awful," Newman replied.

Curtin, also Zooming in to WWHL, jumped in: "It was that same 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. It was uncomfortable. You could understand, you know, there were these bull mooses going at each other. The testosterone was surging, and stuff happens."

Newman added: "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."

Chase, Curtin and Newman were three members of SNL's original cast from when the now-iconic sketch comedy series debuted in 1975. Murray signed on in 1977. Chase was the first to depart the show. Curtin—the first-ever woman to host "Weekend Update"—Newman and Murray all left in 1980.

The year 1980 also reunited Chase and Murray, who co-starred in Caddyshack.

Curtin most recently stars in Queen Bees, which hit theaters last Friday (June 11), and Newman's audiobook memoir titled May You Live In Interesting Times released via Audible in March.

Watch Curtin and Newman's "After Show" segment with Cohen for more SNL gems below.