Sally Field recently told Vanity Fair that Robin Williams made arrangements for her to leave the “Mrs. Doubtfire” set when her father died during filming. Field had not planned to disrupt the production due to the personal matter, but Williams could tell something was off about his co-star and made director Chris Columbus change the order of filming so that the production could shoot around Field for a day.
'Mrs. Doubtfire' Teen Star Says Robin Williams Spoke 'Super Honestly About Mental Health' and Made Her Feel Like 'I'm Not a Freak. I Don't Have to Hide This About Myself'
“I never shared this story before,” Field said. “I was in the camper outside of the courtroom where we were shooting the divorce scene. My father had a stroke a couple of years before, and was in a nursing facility. I got a phone call from the doctor saying my father had passed — a massive stroke. He asked if I wanted them to put him on the resuscitator. I said, ‘No, he did not want that. Just let him go. And please lean down and say, “Sally says goodbye.”‘”
“I was of course beside myself,” Field continued. “I came on the set trying with all my might to act. I wasn’t crying. Robin came over, pulled me out of the set, and asked, ‘Are you okay?'”
When Field eventually told Williams that her father had died, she remembered Williams responding: “Oh my God, we need to get you out here right now.”
“And he made it happen — they shot around me the rest of the day,” Field said. “I could go back to my house, call my brother and make arrangements. It’s a side of Robin that people rarely knew: He was very sensitive and intuitive.”
Williams impacted the lives of many of his co-stars during the making of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Lisa Jakub, who was a teenager when she played the eldest daughter of Williams’ character in the film, told Fox News Digital earlier this year that Williams was the first person to speak openly to her about mental health struggles when they worked together on “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
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“He would talk to me about his struggles and the things that he went through,” Jakub said. “And it was the first time that I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m not a freak. I don’t have to hide this about myself. This is just something that some of us have to deal with.’”
“Mrs. Doubtfire” starred Williams as a father who decides to dress up as a female housekeeper so he can work for his estranged wife and see his children. The movie was the second highest-grossing film of 1993 with $441 million worldwide.
During a May interview on the “Brotherly Love” podcast, Jakub also shared how Williams tried to help her when she was kicked out of high school for taking time off to shoot “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
“The amazing thing was Robin saw that I was upset — he asked me what was going on,” Jakub said. “He wrote a letter to my principal saying that he wanted them to rethink this decision and that I was just trying to pursue my education and career at the same time, and could they please support me in this. The principal got the letter, framed the letter, put it up in the office, and didn’t ask me to come back. Amazing.”
Head over to Vanity Fair’s website to read more from Field.
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