Episode published: Friday 01/30/2026
Michael: Hey everyone, welcome to a brand-new episode of Every Day is Groundhog Day (Except for the Days When It's Not), the only podcast devoted to the holiday Groundhog Day. I'm your host, Michael, from countdowntogroundhogday.com. Hope you enjoyed our last episode with Andy Karl, who originated the role of Phil Connors in the Groundhog Day musical at London's Old Vic Theatre and on Broadway. On the day that this episode is released, there are only three more sleeps until Groundhog Day. I hope you're all excited and getting ready for the big day. For today's episode, we have a special treat: an interview with one of the stars of the Groundhog Day film, Stephen Tobolowsky. Stephen, of course, played the iconic character of helpful insurance salesman, Ned Ryerson, in the movie, and very generously agreed to speak with me about his time on the film and about his decades-long career in general. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. So, without further ado, here's the interview.
Michael: So, today I'm speaking with film legend, Stephen Tobolowsky, an actor who has one of the most impressive IMDb pages that I've ever seen, appearing in films like Wild Hogs, Garfield: The Movie, the live action one from 2004, Mississippi Burning, the recent Freakier Friday, recurring or regular roles on shows like Silicon Valley, The Goldbergs and its spin-off Schooled, Glee. Stephen has also written two books, The Dangerous Animals Club and My Adventures with God, and has two movies centered around him and his stories, Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party and The Primary Instinct. But of course, the reason why I'm speaking with Mr. Tobolowsky today is that he played the classic character of Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day. So welcome, Stephen. Before we get to Groundhog Day, could you talk a little bit about what led you into acting in the first place?
Stephen Tobolowsky: Well, I grew up in Oak Cliff, which is a little community outside of Dallas. It was back in the day when moms just let their kids outside all day, and we just played all day, and hit each other with sticks and bricks and tried to drown each other in the creek, or whatever. We came back. But the big game we always played was 'Cowboys and Indians,' because cap pistols were big back then, and you wanted to show your cap pistol off by shooting a couple Indians, and some of the kids in our neighborhood wanted to play Indians because they wanted the thrill of dying. You know, they wanted to have a big, dramatic death, and they wanted to do that. So, we played that for a while, but I loved movies. From when I was a tiny, tiny child, they always transported me. And I remember, I was about five years old, and I went outside to Billy Hart and Billy Lorman, and the other guys that lived on our block, and said, 'Instead of playing cowboys today, why don't we play making movies?' And they said, 'How do you play that?' I said, 'It's the same thing as 'Cowboys and Indians,' except we're doing it for a movie.' So, we just kept playing 'Cowboys and Indians,' but we gave it the dramatic flair as if we were in a movie. I was in plays at the local park. I remember I won second best Pee Wee actor for a role I essayed in a play at Keys Park, I think I was about 11 years old at the time. And I won first place for best junior actor for a play I did when I was 13. So, I always wanted to be in plays, and I always wanted to be an actor. And I found over here in my stack - I have a big stack of crap under this bookshelf, like, filled with stuff from my past - a report I did in ninth grade, it was career day. And for career day in ninth grade, I said I wanted to be an actor, and I described why I wanted to be an actor. And in that incisive literary offering I gave Ms. Ruff, our teacher, I mentioned that what it was that excited me was the performance before a live audience because you make the story between what happens on stage, and what the audience sees and hears. I read through that, and I thought, that's pretty close to what Stanislavski said. [laughs] I mean, he said it better, but it's the same magical idea that there is a flame in between the audience and the stage, which is where acting lives. Of course, he was just talking about the stage; TV and movies and voiceovers, that's a whole different world from what I even imagined. Luckily, I've been able to participate in all of them in my life. So, I'm a kid who had his dream come true.
Michael: Oh, wow. When did Groundhog Day come onto your radar then? You would have been acting professionally for what? Like, 20 years or so?
Stephen Tobolowsky: Well, not really. I mean, you would have to say, you know, I came out to Los Angeles with my girlfriend Beth at the end of graduate school, so that means I was about 21 or so. I came out in 1976, and I was born in '51. Yeah, so that's 21, right? 51... No, '51,' 61, '71. No, about 20. No! We came out- Yes, yes. So, I was 26 or so when I came out because I did graduate school with Beth, then we came out. So, I was about 26, and the only thing we were able to do was theater, and that was theater for free, and very slowly began to... I got an agent. It was kind of an interesting story. So, we were all hoping to do this, all this free theater, just get a part. And there were hundreds of people who wanted to act. I had a theater teacher who said the most important thing is to take acting classes because if you take acting classes, it's a vortex for everything. So, when I moved out to LA, I immediately got into the acting class he recommended; that was Ed K. Martin, and that was Maria Gobetti's acting class. And one of the first Sunday afternoons, someone came in and said, 'Someone has dropped out of our play, and we need a replacement,' and I just raised my hand, and I said, 'I'll do it. I'll do it.' This was Sunday, and I would have to perform, like, that next weekend. So, I was going to have to meet everybody and audition , like, on Wednesday, then rehearse Thursday, and go on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So, I got the part. Everything went really great. The first night I went on stage, everything was just perfect. Everyone was congratulating me, and it went fine the second night. Then came Saturday night, and Saturday night, everyone said, 'Fran Bascom is in the audience.' Fran Bascom was the number one casting director in Los Angeles at the time, and I thought, now is my chance to make my mark! So, I was playing this part that I'm waiting for my girlfriend to show up, always, at this table, and she doesn't show up. And then I have this monologue on the phone with her, a pay phone, and I beg her to come. That was my big moment, the monologue. And then, I'm still just waiting the whole play, and at the very end of the play, kind of the little gift of the play is she shows up at my table. So, it was there, and I reach out and hold her, and that's kind of the end of the play. I only had this big speech on the pay phone, and they had a pay phone on stage. So, I go over on Saturday night, the audience is pretty full, that means we had about 60 or 70 people there, that was a full audience back then, and Fran Bascom, number one casting director in Los Angeles. And I start my phone call to my girl, you know, 'Listen, I don't know whatever happened between us, but I can make it right. Please, please! If you just...' and the phone fell off of the wall.
Michael: Oh no!
Stephen Tobolowsky: The pay phone fell onto the floor! So, I continued doing the speech, and I get on the ground, and the audience now is laughing, and so I think, like, well, I have to stop them laughing. I can't do the whole speech just on my knees on the floor talking to this phone. [laughs] It is rather comical. So, I picked up the pay phone in my arm, and pay phones are very heavy, I mean, they're very heavy. So, I have the phone in one hand and the receiver in the other, and I start continuing my monologue to the audience, and then the line from the receiver to the phone drops. So now, I just have a receiver in my hand, and I'm holding a pay phone, which is not connected to the receiver, so I throw the pay phone off stage, holding just the receiver. The audience is laughing in hysterics now, and I keep talking to her, saying, 'You're the love of my life. If you will please come...' whatever. And I finished the speech, and then I threw the phone receiver off stage too, and left because that was my big thing before she shows up at the end. And I was in tears backstage. I was so absolutely humiliated. Humiliated! The next day I'm at home, and my phone rings, says, 'This is so-and-so secretary from Fran Bascom's office. She would like to see you.' I went 'WHAT?' 'She would like to see you over at Paramount.' [rushed breathing, stressed exclamation] So, I drive over to Paramount, thinking that she's probably going to make fun of me some more. I mean, the most humiliating moment on stage. I go in there, Fran has this stack of scripts, and she said, 'Read these scripts and see if there's any part in there you think you could do.' And I said, 'You've got to be kidding!' And she says, 'I'm not kidding.' I said, 'Fran, that was a car accident! I mean, that's the worst-' And she says, 'You're exactly the kind of actor I'm looking for.' And I said, 'How do you mean?' She says, 'You don't quit.' So, Fran Bascom became my hero and started getting me auditions, and I began to slowly move from working for free and taking acting classes to getting auditions for commercials, getting auditions for sitcoms, and slowly, I began to get some kind of work. Now, I went from agent to agent to agent, to better agent to better agent to better agent. I still didn't have much to my resume, but that's when I got the script for Groundhog Day. I read it, and they wanted me to read the part of Ned, and I thought, okay. I'll go ahead and do this. At the time, I was working on, I guess it was a movie in Paris. Paris, California. And Paris, California, was the gang capital of California. I mean, there's nothing but rival gangs everywhere. So, in this movie, I play kind of a gangster kind of guy, and I have a brother who is deaf-mute, you know, he can't speak. And so, the studio paid for us to have sign language of the deaf classes so whenever Kurt and I talked, we would do sign language of the deaf. And of course, Kurt could speak, but this was just the part we were doing. For the only time in my career, we're working in Paris, California, and the producers put Kurt and I in the same room. You never do that! You never put somebody in your room when you're out of town, you know? You don't do that. So, Kurt and I are in the double beds at night, we're talking, and he's saying, 'Well, what are you doing after this?' And I said, 'Well, I don't know, really.' And he said, 'I'm doing this movie called Groundhog Day that's about to start shooting. I have this great part of Ned,' and I'm going like, oh, this is the part they want me to read for. I'm thinking, well, this is going to be a bad story for one of the two of us. This sounds grim. And I had my audition with Harold Ramis the next day in LA. So, you know, I didn't say anything to Kurt. After we finished shooting in the morning, I got in my car and drove the two hours and 40 minutes back to Los Angeles. I auditioned for Harold Ramis, and I did everything. I mean, I unzipped his pants, I shined his shoes. I mean, Harold Ramis read with me, he read the Bill Murray part, and I was just all over him, I was completely obnoxious. And I drive back, and I found out my agent called and said, 'You have the part of Ned,' and Kurt found out too, and Kurt felt, as he should have, he felt like someone stabbed him in the back. I mean, I didn't know anything about it. You know, it was great, but I had no idea what this drama would be. And then, as soon as we finished that show, I flew up to Woodstock, Illinois, to start shooting Groundhog Day, and we were going to start just with my first scene with me and Bill Murray walking down the street. Oh, Phil! Phil!' That whole thing. So, it was a series of strange events that led to me to audition, and getting the part, and ending up doing it right after Calendar Girl, immediately after.
Michael: So, a few things I wanted to touch on, and then I'll definitely have some more questions about Groundhog Day as well. Do you think that if that play had gone perfectly well, like, the phone didn't fall off the wall, do you think that you would have gotten that agent? Or do you think that that is what, you know, those special circumstances, which she saw... She, right?
Stephen Tobolowsky: She. Fran is a she. And she's not an agent, she's a casting director. More than an agent.
Michael: Casting director, okay.
Stephen Tobolowsky: I think you are onto it! I think if that had been a regular performance, regular night, whatever, unremarkable in any way, Fran probably would have thought, 'Oh. Well, that guy's nice. I'll put his name in my book,' for whatever my performance was. But I think it was the calamity, and dealing with the calamity, that made it all so noteworthy for her. And I should mention something else too. I had done the movie Mississippi Burning, it was pretty much my first big movie. I did that before I did Groundhog Day. The casting director on that movie was Howard Feuer, who's the same casting director as Groundhog Day, on Mississippi Burning. So, they brought me in to audition for Alan Parker, and I auditioned for him, like, four different times.. Alan Parker ended up taking me under his wing, and really, it was extraordinary. He changed my contract from a one-week contract to a run-of-the-picture contract because I had to do this big thing outdoors, and they didn't know what the weather would be. So, I ended up getting this huge three-month contract, and Alan said, 'Well, I hear you're interested in filmmaking. Maybe you'd like to follow me around and see how I do what I do.' And Alan became one of my great heroes. He's the one who showed me all about making movies and how to make movies. And Howard Feuer was his casting director. So, when they ran into a snag, whatever the snag was, on Groundhog Day, Howard Feuer had already worked with me and seen me, and so he could recommend me for the role of Ned; there was a connection there. And there's another connection too, and that is opening night of Groundhog Day. Andie and I went to the premiere together, and Alan Parker was standing in front of the theater. I went up to him and I said, 'Alan, Alan, I can't thank you enough. You helped me so much understand film, and what film is about, and so many aspects of it. I never thanked you the way I should have thanked you. You gave me a life lesson, world-class knowledge on what this business is.' And he says, 'Oh, shut up! I just hope you're good in this movie.' And so, for opening night of Groundhog Day, Alan Parker was there too, to sort of wish me well. I had a dear friend of mine, Robert Darnell, Bob Darnell, who said, you know, 'You reach a point in your life in which you realize that there's about 20 people in the world and all of them are friends.' And that's sort of where I got in this business, that everybody knew everybody else. It was small enough, everybody looked out for everybody else, for the most part. I felt a real camaraderie with not only becoming a part of show business as a whole, but working on the big films, Mississippi Burning, Groundhog Day. I felt like we were all a part of a big community.
Michael: I did want to ask about... You said that you were sharing a room with Kurt- I'm sorry, I forget the last name.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Kurt Fuller. Yeah, crazy.
Michael: Kurt Fuller. And you said that that doesn't normally happen.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Never!
Michael: And has it ever happened again?
Stephen Tobolowsky: Never!
Michael: Wow.
Stephen Tobolowsky: You never, if you're an actor on the road, they don't put you up with another actor. You know, you get your own room. It's not like grade school. [chuckles] You're all adults, you know, and it's like, 'Well, what side of the bed do you want?' You're not camping out; this is professional. So, they have to provide you with, you know, a room, and how to get to the set. and all that sort of stuff. You can't hitchhike to Sony Studios, you know? They have to get you there.
Michael: So, why do you think that is? Was that just like budgetary?
Stephen Tobolowsky: Yes! I think somebody was being cheap. I think they thought, 'Well, this isn't going to be too bad. We only have them here for, like, one day, to do their scene for one day, so they could share the room that one night.' And it also could have been, you know, it was Paris, California, it wasn't like a huge metropolis. This is a little, little town in California, and it could have been, maybe, it was full up. Maybe the little motel they were putting us up was full, and they only had one room.
Michael: Is that the Jason Priestley movie, Calendar Girl?
Stephen Tobolowsky: That is, yes. That is Jason. Yes.
Michael: I don't remember if I ever saw it, but I feel like that was maybe the movie he did after getting 90210. I feel like I kind of remember that. So, knowing that Kurt, this role was possibly one that he was going for, did that give you any sort of pause, as far as continuing to audition for it? Did it affect your audition at all, do you think?
Stephen Tobolowsky: No, it's none of my business. It's like, you never know what's going on. You never know if somebody had a problem with somebody in a previous life, or if somebody owes somebody money, or whatever, someone wants to spite somebody. You never know. It's not your place to know. And so, it's never happened again. And, you know, Kurt's career flourished; he's had a great career too. So, I was lucky in this case in that I got a role that I was perfect for. One thing it did is... This goes back to the stage show with pulling the phone off the wall. One thing it opened the door for was for me to have no limitations on what I would do to do the scene. So, when I had to do the scene as the audition with Harold Ramis, which was nerve-wracking to do the scene where he was playing the Bill Murray part, and I had to do it, I just... I did everything to him. You know, it was like I was the most obnoxious person in the world. Like I said, I got down and started shining his shoes, I unzipped his pants, and pulled his shirt out, started retucking his shirt in his pants, rrrrrreow! and doing all sorts of Ned stuff, mee-mee-mee-mee-bee-bee-beep! And Harold Ramis is just laughing his head off, he says, 'Stop it! Okay, enough. Stop it. Okay! We're done. Great. Go!' And as I said, you know, he told Bill Murray, 'We've cast the most obnoxious person I've ever met in my life as Ned.' So, that was my legacy from my audition.
Michael: So, I guess you kind of touched on this. I was going to ask, does the amount of, you know, you really going for this, doing all that stuff with Harold Ramis, was that just the way you would audition for anything, or was there something special about this script in particular that you really want this role? Or it's just, that's what you'd be doing because that's what you felt like it called for?
Stephen Tobolowsky: I think when you read a script, there's a couple of different levels you could absorb the script on. The first thing they usually give you is the scene you're gonna do. You have to take a look at the scene you're going to do and see, well, what is the part I'm playing in the scene? What part of the story am I telling in the scene? And you could tell easily from Groundhog Day that I am, in a way, a jolly antagonist to Bill Murray's character. Bill Murray hates seeing me, and he sees me every day, every day in his 10,000 years that he's stuck in this town. He has to see me every day. I don't do him any harm, but I'm a guy who never had popularity in high school, and he did. I never had anything, and now I'm an insurance salesman, so I feel like I'm better than I was before, and so I want to impress people that I'm a success now. So, the strengths and weaknesses of your character emerge as you take a look at the scenes you're going to audition with. But then you take a look at the parameters of the entire script, and you think, what are the rules of this story? And you see that the rules in Groundhog Day are science fiction; they go beyond the boundaries of the normal. You know, Phil is trapped in time, and he's forced to live the same day with the same people over and over and over again. So, does he break or does time break for him? As Harold Ramis said, 'I don't want this to be a story about Bill Murray being wild and crazy. There are a lot of movies like that. This is a story about how we spend the time of our life.' Harold Ramis wanted a bigger story - and Danny Rubin, the script writer - they wanted a bigger story, they just didn't want a simple comedy. So, as an auditioner, you kind of take a look at the parameters of what's in the script, what is mentioned in the script, and what you feel is in the script. In this case, I felt, well, there's no physical limitations to what happens to Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, so there should be no physical limitations to Ned. So, I thought in the audition, I really had permission, because of the tone of the piece, to be as big and as wild and as crazy and obnoxious as I could. I didn't have to just follow the rules, I could do whatever. And I think I kind of look for that in every script. I look for not what the story is, but also, what's the bigger story. If you could say in one word or one sentence, what is the story of Groundhog Day? It's Harold Ramis, 'It's how we spend the time of our life.' That would be a perfect summation. If you could take a look at, like, Mississippi Burning, it was a very realistic movie with realistic characters, in fact, characters that really copied people who were really there, FBI agents and leaders and all of this. The idea of Mississippi Burning is the idea that we will oppress. First, we will oppress by force, and then we'll oppress with a smile, and then we'll oppress by law, and we will find ways of oppressing everywhere, and make it to where it's not our fault, or we didn't do it. So, it's a whole different tone, a whole different feeling of a script. So, you don't just apply one notion to each thing you audition for; you have to look for the big picture and see, like, what's the color of the script? If this script were a color, is it black and white? Is it vividly painted? Is it mauve? You know, how does it make you feel?
Michael: So, I know that at one point, the script for Groundhog Day started in the middle. I don't know what version it was, like, the rough draft, and I think even the version that Harold Ramis bought, it started with Bill Murray, like, he's already in the middle of the time loop, and one of the first things you see is him hitting Ned, which in the finished movie is like, middle of the movie. But then, it's kind of like, 'You might be wondering why I just did that,' and, you know, it starts out in the middle, and one of the first things, you don't even know why he's hitting Ned like that, and eventually you find out. I think in the script, Phil Connors doesn't even remember. He's been doing this so long, it's just part of his day, just punching Ned, and he realizes, 'Oh, this is the quickest way to stop him from stopping me in the day,' and he would just hit him. Eventually, he lets him talk, and he's like, 'Oh, this is why I hit him,' because of, you know, this big speech. But I was just curious if that was... When you read the script, if that was still in it or if it's...
Stephen Tobolowsky: Well, it was something like that in the script, but you have to go to the point- The real point of the script is that Phil Connors is going, 'Don't forget.' The problem of the script isn't whether he meets, you know, me, Ned, or whatever, but he keeps forgetting, and he goes through the same day again. The script is about where he's going, like, 'No, I'm going to break the pattern. I'm going to remember that I did this.' And that's when he punches me beforehand, and then he tries something different with, like, hugging me, and trying the opposite, like, 'Oh, Ned,' and then I run away in terror. He keeps trying to change time after that. I think that's the aspect of the movie that gives it its holy quality. This is something that I found kind of fascinating. Like, the number one adjective describing what God does in the Book of Genesis, the number one adjective, what do you think it is? It's a descriptor of God, the Almighty, in the Book of Genesis. The number of times it's mentioned to describe God is more than any other descriptor, and it isn't 'all-powerful.'
Michael: All right, that I was going to say powerful.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Nope. And think about what we're talking about today. God remembers.'
Michael: God remembers.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Is the number one adjective describing God in the Book of Genesis, 'God remembers.' I think even though, you know, as ordinary people, we don't know that, we don't study the Bible that much. But in Groundhog Day, they make that premise come to life; Bill Murray, he remembers. He finally is able to remember, and by remembering, he's able to right wrongs, and he's able to avoid hurts, and he's able to help the old ladies who get a flat tire. You know, he has the tire ready for him because he knows they're going to get a flat tire. He's able to become the local deity because he remembers. He remembers all the stuff and all the hurts, and he's able to fix it before there's even a problem. It kind of is a touch of divine that people don't recognize as anything, as a touch of divine, but it's the thing that elevates the movie Groundhog Day from other movies like it. There's a metaphysical premise underneath. And Harold Ramis was a Buddhist, right? He was not Judeo-Christian. Harold Ramis was a Buddhist, and I remember I asked him the question at a closing day party. He was playing the guitar, sitting on the ground, just playing the little folk thing, and I said, 'How long is Bill trapped in this town? How long?' And Harold Ramis says, 'Well, you know, I'm a practicing Buddhist and we believe it takes 10,000 years to perfect the human soul.' So, Bill's character, Phil Connors is trapped for 10,000 years, for those people who say it's... All these people who figured out the math on it. Harold Ramis' math is, it's 10,000 years because that's how long it takes to-
Michael: So, I've heard that number and I also had heard that the studio was like, people cannot wrap their heads around that long. It's got to be shorter. I did ask Danny Rubin (I think I mentioned that I had spoken to him last year) and, you know, he wouldn't give any sort of definitive answer, but it was basically, like, it would take more than a lifetime, at least one lifetime, but probably more for Phil to be able to undergo this change. That's the number that I always think of in my head, is 10,000 years from, you know, watching behind the scenes documentaries.
Stephen Tobolowsky: So, what makes the movie so great - and it is great, it's a great movie - is, I think, certainly Bill's performance in it, because he carries us on that journey, and I think Andie, Andie's performance. She is magnificent in the performance because, without doing anything overhanded, she represents the purity of love in the movie, and difficult to get a hold of as, you know, Phil finds out. She's not easy; she's a difficult person to capture her heart and difficult person to capture her soul. But she IS love. As you watch it, I think, year, after year, after year, seeing the film, I find her performance just towering in that I just fall in love with her every time I see it.
Michael: Yeah, she gives a really great performance. The movie is so centered around Phil Connors, Bill Murray, I was trying to think, are there any scenes where he's not even in it? The only one I was like, oh, there's that one scene where he's, like, a corpse, and I was trying to remember, do you see him as the corpse, even? It's so centered around him. But, you know, Andie MacDowell and you, Chris Elliott, all these roles, which are so much smaller than Bill's are just so memorable. It's not necessarily the most to do in the script, but I mean, everything works so well and the performances are so great. Even, really, you only have that one scene, just on the street. But it's so memorable, and you do so much with that role, even though there's technically so little that's actually happening there.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Yeah, I have to remind people, because some people may not have thought of this or didn't know, and maybe other people have known for a long time. As a filmmaker, what would you think is the most important footage you shoot in your movie? You're doing a movie. What is the most important footage? There's a question to filmmakers out there. And I will give you Harold Ramis's answer: Anything you shoot the first week is the most important footage you will ever shoot on a film, because that is the film that everyone who is putting money into the movie, all the backers are going to see every take, every frame. All the producers are going to be watching, looking over your shoulder as a director to see, 'Is my money being well spent? Is this going to be...?' So, you know, Harold Ramis said, 'What we wanted to do, we wanted to start off with you and Bill, having Ned and Bill. So, okay, we have comedy in this movie.' So, immediately that first week, the first two days, we shot a lot of me and Bill, they go like, 'Well, there's comedy.' And then we have to get a love scene in there in that first week, all of this. But at the end of that first week, probably the last day and a half, Bill Murray had a scene, a very long scene, that was him realizing he doesn't have consequences. If you remember the movie, it's him in his hotel room alone, and it's just a series of cuts of him going crazy, of him growing a huge beard, of him shaving his head bald, of him jumping up and down on the bed, of him playing a rock and roll guitar, spray painting graffiti all over the wall. All of that stuff, all of those scenes, all those shots, all of that takes so much time and money because you have to have a bald wig for Bill to wear, you know, to show that he's bald. That costs thousands of dollars, it's not cheap. And then you have to have a wig, crazy wig; that's not cheap. Then spray painting the wall; you have to redo the wall and make it look absolutely perfect after you- I mean, it's so expensive. And Harold Ramis, at the end of that first week, threw a lot of that footage out and said, 'No, not doing it.' That's when he said to me at lunch, he said, 'This isn't going to be a movie about Bill with no consequences, because we've seen that before. He's very funny doing that. But this is a movie, how we spend the time of our life and it has to reflect that.' So, he and Danny Rubin started rewriting the script. It could have been a disaster, but because Harold Ramis and Danny are so good, the script turned out to be cohesive. We were getting new pages every day. We were shooting from the hip. We weren't using any old bits, we were, like, flying- In the one scene in there, I'd finished shooting Groundhog Day and I was back in LA and Trevor Albert, our executive producer, called and said, 'Stephen, you got to come back to the set. We've got another scene for you.' And as you said, it is not a scene where I'm on the street, it's a scene in the party at the club with Bill Murray and Andie. I came back for another week, and they had no script for me, and they said, 'Well, Bill's going to do something great for you. We have to show Bill doing something great for you.' So, I sat there and there were no pages, no pages, no pages, and we're getting near the end of the week. And so, I write a scene where Bill buys all this insurance from me. So, we were going to get kicked out of the set, we only had the set for, like, another hour and a half or something, and we hadn't shot anything, I'd been there a week. So, I said to Harold, 'Well, I wrote this scene.' And Harold said, 'Let me look at it. Well, I think it's good.' They showed it to Bill. What do you think?' And Bill says, 'Sure. Sure, we can do this,' and then Andie goes, 'I could throw a joke in.' Okay, okay. So, that scene in there where I go, he did death and dismemberment, water damage, all the insurance things, that was the scene that basically I wrote, and then Bill and Andie and people just threw stuff in. It was one take, one print, and we were kicked off the set. I remember, it all came from my insurance guy, Dennis Sokol. Dennis was a funny guy, I mean, but he would go, [urgent tone] 'Stephen! Stephen! I've got a new death and dismemberment clause for you. This will be good for you.' I go, 'Dennis, a death and dismemberment?' 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, nobody likes to think about being dismembered, but it happens, and you need to be insured for it. And then there's fire!' So, Dennis would list all these different kinds of insurance that he wanted me to buy, so I just remembered those and made a list of those and put that in the scene and it made it into the final movie. And as a great testament, Dennis at the end said, 'Stephen! Stephen! I saw the movie Groundhog Day, I loved it! I loved it! And you were a great insurance man. You know, so many times people make fun of insurance people in movies, but at least you made it like it really was! We appreciate it.' You know, I go like, 'Okay, okay.' So, when you do something improvisationally, which some of Groundhog Day was, it could either be a disaster or it could work. We were lucky that, in our case, it worked. I mean, it could have just been a catastrophe, but it worked because Harold Ramis had such experience and improv, as did Bill, as did everybody there. You know, they knew what they were doing, so it worked well.
Michael: It's so funny that that scene is, like, you know, last minute addition, a scene that you wrote because it's so perfect. Like, you know, this is the ending of Ned's story. Otherwise, it's just him on the street. I was trying to remember, what is the interaction between them? Do we see it on that final day? I assume he doesn't hit him.
Stephen Tobolowsky: No, no! I just go, 'Thank you! It was the greatest day of my life!' is what I end up saying. You know, he bought all this insurance, 'The greatest day of my life!' And then Andie says something like, 'Well, let's not spoil it,' [chuckles] and takes Bill off, 'Let's not spoil it. Let's just call it a day.' And then, they leave, and I go, 'I got that! Rrrrrreow!' And I followed them out.
Michael: Yeah, it's a great scene, I'm glad it stayed in. I was going to ask you, so there's the street scenes, and then there's that final scene. Were there any deleted scenes, like, of you interacting with anybody else besides...? Because it's pretty much, you know, without that scene, it's just you and Bill Murray.
Stephen Tobolowsky: There were some deleted scenes of me on the street; there were other variations of the street scene that were deleted. And then, there's also the scene where Bill starts kissing me. So, that's something that's a little diff- And then I run away. You know, rrrrrrreow! That was one take, one print. That scene was one take, one print. The punch was one take, one print. We had a lot that we were flying through because we didn't have much time. But, you know, it all worked out okay, because usually, it was just in the hands of Bill, or Bill and Harold. You know, basically Bill was in control of the scene and Harold was in control of filming. So, it wasn't as complicated as it would seem.
Michael: You might have mentioned, how many weeks were you shooting? You said you had to come back for that final scene.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Yeah, I think my original contract was four weeks.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Stephen Tobolowsky: And then, I came back. I had to go back for one more week.
Michael: Okay. So, five, six weeks, something like that.
Stephen Tobolowsky: Basically five. And the movie got released, and a month after it was released, Trevor Albert, our executive producer, called me on the phone and goes, 'Stephen, I think we have a hit!' And I go, 'What?' 'I think it's a hit.' 'Is it really?' And he goes, 'Yeah!' You know, ordinarily, there is a mathematical algorithm as to how audiences go. That is, you have a certain amount of people who want to watch it, see a new movie, the first week. And then, about half that number come the second week, half again, the third week, and then half of the half of the half, the fourth week. And then, they usually kick the movie out of that movie theater and bring a new movie in. He said, 'We have been gaining audience each week, which means people are seeing the movie more than once. So, I think it's going to be a hit.' But none of us, [laughs] none of us expected it was going to be like the new Wizard of Oz, and that was because of cable TV. Now, on Groundhog Day, every cable station seems to play Groundhog Day. You know, it's just amazing. But it's such a wonderful movie, why not? You know, it bears re-seeing, like the Wizard of Oz.
Michael: And that's the first part of the interview. Thanks to Stephen Tobolowsky for speaking with me about his time playing Ned Ryerson. I'll be releasing the second part of my conversation with Stephen on Groundhog Day, so keep an eye out for that. Music for the show is written by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Show artwork is by Tom Mike Hill. Transcripts are provided by Aveline Malek. If you want to learn more about Groundhog Day, visit countdowntogroundhogday.com. Any feedback or voice messages can be sent to podcast@countdowntogroundhogday.com. Talk to you next time!
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Transcribed by Aveline Malek.