Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) is not exactly a film that has gone unnoticed. Not only for having made a whole generation cry and laugh during the nineties, or for the complex role that Robin Williams played (and improvised) ―a strict, but tender, housekeeper― while addiction problems haunted him, but for all the anecdotes that its cast has been revealing over the years. And three decades have already passed since its premiere. This time it has been its protagonist, Sally Field (Pasadena; California, 77 years old), who wanted to remember him when 10 years have passed since the actor’s death. And she has done so by revealing an anecdote from the filming that until now she had never made public: how Williams helped her when she found out in the middle of filming the film that her father had died. “I had not shared this story before,” confesses the actress. in the magazine Vanity Fair. Robin forced the film’s director, Chris Columbus, to change the order of filming so that Field could take the day off and travel to say goodbye to her father.
“I was in the trailer outside the courtroom where we were filming the divorce scene,” Field recalls. “My father had had a stroke a couple of years earlier and was in a nursing home. I got a phone call from the doctor saying he had passed away. He asked me if I wanted to be put on resuscitation. I said, ‘No, he didn’t want that. Just let him go. And please lean over and say, ‘Sally says goodbye,’” Field says, adding that she was “out of it” at the time.
However, the setback did not stop her from completing her work day and she decided to continue filming, hiding the news from her co-stars and crew: “I came to the set trying to act as hard as I could. I wasn’t crying.” At that moment, Robin Williams realized that something was not right and approached his co-star: “Are you okay?” The actress herself recalls the conversation: “Yes, why?” I replied. “I don’t know, I just thought I’d ask that,” she said. “No, I’m not, Robin. My father just passed away.” “Oh my God! We have to get you out of here right now,” was Williams’ immediate reaction. “And he made it possible: they filmed scenes without me for the rest of the day. I was able to go home, call my brother and make the necessary arrangements. It’s a side of Robin that people rarely knew about: he was very sensitive and intuitive.”
The actress is one of 20 people, including colleagues and friends of Williams, with whom the magazine has spoken to pay tribute to the figure of the Oscar winner – in 1998, for his role in The unstoppable Will Hunting―. And Sally Field remembers him as a person and a friend, but also as the person in charge of giving life to the Mrs. Doubtfire beyond the initial script, a role that in most scenes he improvised: “My job was simply to respond to everything he did, as a real person would. I loved that feeling of being alert.” “In reality, you couldn’t see who was the Mrs. Doubtfire in the script. It became a way of life in itself thanks to him.”
Sally Field has not been the only Williams’ co-star in the film to speak publicly about her generosity. Lisa Jakub, who plays the eldest daughter, said during an interview for Fox News last May, that the actor was the first adult to speak openly to him about mental health: “He would talk to me about his difficulties and the things he had been through. It was the first time I felt like I wasn’t a freak.” On another occasion, during an interview for him Brotherly Love podcast, which managed to bring together the three brothers of the film, Jakub shared how Williams intervened when she was expelled from high school for skipping classes while filming a movie. The actor wrote a letter to the director asking him to think about his decision and explaining how she was trying to balance her education and acting career. Although it didn’t really help: “I wasn’t readmitted, but it was amazing.”
There is no doubt that Williams earned the title of friend to many of his fellow professionals before his untimely death on August 11, 2014. Chris Columbus, for example, recalls in Vanity Fair her passion for acting: “Robin and I made a deal. He said, ‘We’ll do two or three scripted takes and then we’ll act. ’ The scene where she takes off her Mrs. Doubtfire costume when the social worker arrives was brutally improvised. And the final scene in the restaurant. Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan and the kids had no idea what Robin was going to say next.” Robin Williams had the ability to make anyone laugh, to play and improvise any role, but also to help any friend who needed it.
#Sally #Field #reveals #time #nice #gesture #Robin #Williams #filming #Doubtfire