Ghostbusters alumni Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts and director Ivan Reitman reconnected for the latest installment of Josh Gad’s quarantine YouTube series Reunited Apart.
Reitman’s son Jason — who is directing the upcoming sequel Ghosbusters: Afterlife — also joined the laid-back Zoom call, along with Gad’s fellow super-fan Kumail Nanjiani, theme song writer-performer Ray Parker Jr. and several actors who contributed smaller roles in the blockbuster supernatural comedy.
The crew recalled some of their favorite moments from the shoot. Weaver noted that Murray improvised the standout piano sequence (“They hate this. I like to torture them.”), and Murray pinpointed a “huge moment” when Reitman screened an early cut of the Slimer ballroom scene (without special effects) during a Thanksgiving’s dinner at the filmmaker’s home. “I remember going back to work on Monday and saying, ‘Guys, let’s all calm down. [The movie’s] gonna be really big,’” Murray said.
Nanjiani helped quiz the actors on some of their characters’ most famous lines, asking them to fill in the blanks. He also, hilariously, noted how much he loved the franchise growing up: “Ghostbusters truly is the first thing I remember loving in my life – before my parents,” he said. “The order was Ghostbusters, mom, Ghostbusters 2, dad.”
The guests shared memories about their late co-writer/co-star Harold Ramis (“He was an incredible writing collaborator,” noted Aykroyd), and Jason Reitman refused to give away any details about his upcoming sequel, which was recently delayed to March 5, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parker Jr. ended the segment by playing the film’s theme song on electric guitar.
The episode raised money for the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization devoted to “ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the Untied States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”
