Robin Williams was known to be a talent in improvisation and Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus is opening up about working with the late actor.
In a new interview to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the comedy, Columbus said that Williams improvised so much on set “We shot almost 2 million feet of film on that picture.”
“Early on in the process, he went to me, ‘Hey boss, the way I like to work, if you’re up for it, is I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play,’” Columbus told Business Insider. “By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise. And that’s exactly how we shot every scene. We would have exactly what was scripted, and then Robin would go off and it was something to behold.”
Columbus recalled that the script supervisor was not typing what Williams was saying during his improv scenes and “Robin would change every take. So Robin would go to a place where he couldn’t remember much of what he said. We would go to the script supervisor and ask her and sometimes she didn’t even get it all.”
“Often, he would literally give us a completely different take than what we did doing the written takes,” he added.
The film’s director said the only way Williams would stop improvising was when they were out of film.
“It got to the point that I had to shoot the entire movie with four cameras to keep up with him,” Columbus noted. “None of us knew what he was going to say when he got going and so I wanted a camera on the other actors to get their reactions. For Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field, it was quite difficult for them not to break character.”
Back in the 1990s, Columbus said that Williams shot down the possibility of a sequel to the comedy. However, a year before Williams died, they talked about a follow-up to the classic film and had a script that the director calls “really strong.” Columbus says that Williams’s “only comment was, ‘Boss, do I have to be in the suit as much this time?’”
“So we talked about it and I think he was hoping in the rewrite we would cut back on the Doubtfire character,” Columbus said. “But then Robin passed away so there will never be a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire.”
Due to the overwhelming amount of footage that was generated during the filming process, Columbus opened up about making a documentary to show Williams’ process in creating Mrs. Doubtfire.
“We want to show Robin’s process. There is something special and magical about how he went about his work and I think it would be fun to delve into it,” Columbus says. “I mean, there’s 2 million feet of film in that warehouse so there could be something we can do with all of that.”
