Bill Murray interview at NYT

Q. When you’re playing a real-life figure like Roosevelt, do you do any additional preparation for the role?

A. I’ve always tried to be a little bit loose. This great director we had at Second City [Del Close] said: “You wear your characters like a trench coat. It’s still you in there, but there’s like a trench coat.” So I figured this was like a winter trench coat, because there was just a little bit more character that comes to the party. So I did a lot more reading, a lot more studying.

Read the whole interview by Dave Itzkoff here.

Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images For BFI