When the original Ghostbusters reunited, one of them was ‘almost in tears’

When a new “Ghostbusters” movie is coming soon to theaters, who ya gonna call?

Late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon called on original Ghostbusters Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson to promote Sony Pictures’ “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” out Friday.

While appearing back-to-back on “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night” Monday, the longtime co-stars discussed reuniting on set and reminisced about shooting the first “Ghostbusters” films in the 1980s in New York City.

“I never thought we would [return to the franchise] until I got there, and I realized it’s actually happening,” Hudson, a.k.a. Winston Zeddemore, told Fallon.

“But I will say, when I got in the suit — and Bill and Dan and seeing Sigourney [Weaver] — it was almost spiritual, man. I was almost in tears.”

×

True to form, Murray had a much less earnest reaction to suiting back up as Peter Venkman and donning the Ghostbusters’ signature proton pack. The veteran comic compared the experience to carrying a 40-pound baby for 14 hours a day.

“It was painful,” Murray told Meyers, drawing laughs from the studio audience. “It was physically and emotionally painful. You forget how heavy it is to carry a small refrigerator on your back for hours and hours a day. And then they say, ‘OK, guys, get down on the ground. Cut! All right, stand up, and then get down on the ground again.’ That’s what we did.”

“You had shockwaves of memory from it,” he added on “The Tonight Show.” “You went, ‘Oh, God. This is horrible.’ Because it was really very, very long days, and it was a very heavy thing. It’s not as heavy as the original, but we’re weaker [now], so it’s about the same.”

×

Before the flagship “Ghostbusters” came out in 1984, Aykroyd recalled the anonymity with which the actors were able to shoot scenes in the Big Apple, as hordes of blasé New Yorkers milled around the production.

“It was wonderful because we would be shooting in civilian clothes, and nobody would be really looking, and then we’d get on the packs and the uniforms, running down the street, and people would kind of go, ‘Are they exterminators?’” Aykroyd, who plays Raymond Stantz, told Meyers while sporting a “Ghostbusters” hat.

“We’d be going all over town in the Cadillac, and [passersby were like], ‘It’s just another emergency vehicle, I guess.’ ... They weren’t really impressed at all with us at the time. It was a grand time to be in New York.”

×

But they didn’t stay anonymous for long. On “Late Night,” Hudson remembered the pandemonium that ensued a while after the 1984 “Ghostbusters” and the 1989 “Ghostbusters II” sequel hit screens.

“It came out, it was a hit, and that was what it was,” Hudson said. “But I think it was five, 10 years later — that fans kept coming up, putting on the jumpsuits, turning their cars into ectomobiles, showing up at my house — that I realized that this was something really, really different.”

“Afterlife” marks the first time Aykroyd, Murray and Hudson have reprised their iconic roles since “Ghostbusters II,” though they also made cameos as different characters in the 2016 “Ghostbusters” reboot starring Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig.

The latest installment, directed by Jason Reitman (son of original “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman), sees Stantz, Winston and Venkman help a new generation of ghostbusters investigate something strange in their neighborhood.

Also featured among the 2021 “Ghostbusters” ensemble are “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard, “Handmaid’s Tale” actor Mckenna Grace and newly minted Sexiest Man Alive Paul Rudd. (Harold Ramis, who played fourth Ghostbuster Egon Spengler in the first two films, died in 2014.)

“Jason Reitman wrote a great script ... going right back to the first two movies and its DNA and its heart and soul, and we just read it and thought, ‘This is the right time, and this is the right way to do it,’” Aykroyd told Fallon.

“Because he grew up as a child of the Ghostbusters in a way, [Jason Reitman] had something that he thought would work as a good story, and we all agreed that he got it,” Murray added.