Recently interviewed by Business Insider, director Chris Columbus spoke about his unforgettable collaboration with Robin Williams on the set of “Madame Doubtfire”, and the hours of improvisation that were offered to him by the actor.
Tragically passing away almost 10 years ago, Robin Williams was not an actor like any other. Capable of exploring all registers and appropriating them to perfection, he was particularly generous in the fields of comedy and that of improvisation, as he notably proved by recording dozens of hours rushes when he dubbed the unforgettable Genie from Aladdin.
While Madame Doubtfire – in which Robin Williams played a divorced father who disguised himself as an Irish governess to spend more time with his children – has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, director Chris Columbus recently spoke about his memories of filming on the microphone of Business Insider.
The filmmaker notably returned to the extraordinary working technique of his main actor, and the long hours of improvisation that he had offered him:
“Very early on, he came to me and said, ‘Hey boss, if it’s no problem for you, I like to work this way: I give you three or four takes that match the script , and then we have fun.
In saying this, his intention was to improvise. And that’s exactly how we shot every scene. We were getting exactly what we wrote, and then Robin was freaking out, and it was worth a watch.”
Sometimes, as Columbus also clarified during the interview, Robin Williams’ incredible fantasies required the team to demonstrate a real sense of adaptation:
“It took on such proportions that I had to shoot the entire film with four cameras to be able to follow it”explained the director, still at the microphone of Business Insider.
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“None of us knew what he was going to say when he started, so I wanted a camera pointed at the other actors to film their reactions. For Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field, it was very difficult not to come out of their characters.”
Revealing that a sequel had been considered before the actor’s death (the latter had also found the script very effective, but wanted to spend less time than the first time in the costume of Madame Doubtfire), Chris Columbus also confided that he really wanted to highlight this wealth of hours improvised by Robin Williams, probably as part of a new documentary:
“We want to show the way Robin does it. There’s something special and magical about the way he worked, and I think it would be fun to delve into that. There’s more to it than that. 600 kilometers of film [ndlr : 2 millions de pieds] in this warehouse, so there’s probably something to be done with all this.”
What do you think of a documentary dedicated to Robin Williams’ many hours of improv on the set of Madame Doubtfire?
(Re)discover all the hidden details of the film…