Wes Anderson says only God could have chosen Bill Murray to play God in ‘Phoenician Scheme’

• Writer-director Wes Anderson says he doesn’t think he chose Bill Murray to play God in his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, but “possibly God did.”
• He describes Murray’s version of the Almighty as “an informal God,” and says his star “just didn’t seem that he was faking it.”
• Anderson also discusses the inspiration for the film’s version of heaven.

There’s divine casting, and then there’s divine casting.

In the case of Bill Murray, who plays the Almighty himself in The Phoenician Scheme, it’s the latter. “I don’t know that we chose Bill to play God,” writer-director Wes Anderson tells Entertainment Weekly, pausing to gleefully add, “possibly God did.”

Jokes aside, Anderson says the casting was a match made in heaven. “What I will say is when Bill walked onto the set in his robes and his beard, he could barely move. And yet he seemed very comfortable, and he occupied his throne in a relaxed manner. It just didn’t seem that he was faking it. We knew very quickly he was going to be an informal God who is creating without making a show of it.”

The film follows Benicio del Toro’s wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, who appoints his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Liesl, Korda, and his tutor, kooky bug lover Bjorn (Michael Cera), embark together on a new enterprise, they come up against several bonkers assassination attempts, presumably from Korda’s many enemies. Each time, Korda enters a sort of liminal space —a black and white heaven —where he experiences moments of personal growth and introspection. Here, he encounters Murray’s God… among other things.

“I think some of the most important changes in Benicio’s character Zsa-zsa are taking place during these sort of visions that he’s having as he repeatedly dies, or keeps getting assassinated,” Anderson explains.

To create this heaven — a first for an Anderson joint — he knew he wanted it all to be real. “We wanted it to all exist in front of the camera, to not use computer visual effects, to have it all be there,” he says, adding, “and so we made something kind of like a 360-degree stage, a set of clouds painted, sculpted, and we created a sort of Biblical troupe for these scenes.” (Other members credited in this troupe include F. Murray Abraham, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Willem Dafoe.) 

Director Wes Anderson and actor Bill Murray at the Berlin premiere of ‘The Phoenician Scheme’.

Matthias Nareyek/WireImage

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“I think it’s sort of the way biblical settings and characters were portrayed during the Renaissance, I think that’s really what we’ve done,” Anderson adds. “I mean, we’re so familiar with the Renaissance representation of stories from the Bible, and ours is the black and white version of that.”

The Phoenician Scheme, which was co-written with frequent Anderson collaborator Roman Coppola, also stars Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis. The film is now playing in theaters.