Bill Murray was reluctant to do a Ghostbusters sequel and ending up doing one “under false pretences”.

The Groundhog Day star played Peter Venkman alongside Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and Dan Aykroyd in Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original, and the supernatural comedy was such a success that a sequel was released in 1989.

During a talk at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Murray discussed his history with the franchise and admitted he was “the most reluctant” member of the cast and was “in absolutely no hurry” to do a sequel, but he was “outfoxed” when all the cast was brought in for a meeting and given an impressive pitch.

“They got us all together and they pitched a story idea that was really great. I thought, ‘Holy cow, we could make that work,'” he said, reports Collider. “It ended up not being the story they wrote. They got us in the sequel under false pretences. Harold had this great idea, but by the time we got to shooting it, I showed up on set and went, ‘What the hell is this? What is this thing?’ But we were already shooting it, so we had to figure out how to make it work.

“That was a great bunch of people. Just to be together was great. I probably like the first one better than the second one, just because the first cut is the deepest.”

Murray will be seen reprising the role once again in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which he believes has the feel of the first film more than the 1989 sequel. However, he admitted filming it was a “physically painful” experience.

“Wearing those packs is extremely uncomfortable,” he shared. “It’s still a really heavy thing to wear, all the time. The special effects in this one are a lot of wind and dirt in your face, and there was a lot of going down and getting back up. I was like, ‘What is this? What am I doing? These are like Bulgarian deadlifts, or a Russian kettlebell, getting up and down with this thing on my back.'”

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is due to be released in November.

– Cover Media