“He just let it rip”: How Robin Williams made ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ sheer magic, according to Pierce Brosnan
In the early 1990s, Pierce Brosnan was experiencing a sticky period in his career. Throughout most of the ’80s, he’d been the handsome, debonair star of NBC’s Remington Steele, a spy show that saw him first generate buzz that he should play James Bond more than a decade before he nabbed the role in 1995’s GoldenEye. However, when Steele was cancelled in ’87, he struggled for several years to escape TV movie ignominy. Therefore, when he signed up for a beloved 1993 comedy classic, it both set his career on an upward trajectory and allowed him to work with a legendary co-star he described as sheer magic.
Before he was approached about a supporting role in a movie that would see one of Hollywood’s biggest comedians play an elderly woman in drag, Brosnan likely would have accepted any job he was offered. He once joked to GQ that he only signed up because he “had a mortgage to pay that month,” and when you look at what he was doing during that period, it begins to sound less and less like a joke. Before the comedy – which was, of course, Mrs Doubtfire – Brosnan was starring in flop theatrical efforts like Live Wire and a string of low-rent TV movies with titles like Murder 101, Victim of Love, and Death Train.
Luckily, on the first day of Mrs Doubtfire, Brosnan realised he was in good hands with the film’s star Robin Williams. He revealed that he first met Williams in an absurd, surreal state when he was wearing the prosthetic mask of the titular 80-year-old Scottish nanny, but aside from that, it was normal Williams attire: a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, with his insanely hairy arms and legs on show.
The razor-sharp comedian immediately launched into character as Mrs Doubtfire, warmly welcoming Brosnan by saying, “Oh, hello Pierce. Ooh, you’re very handsome, ooh, give us a kiss!” Then, with Brosnan grinning, he switched to his normal voice and said, “Hey there, buddy. Nice to see you, glad you came up.” Brosnan told Us Weekly, “That’s how I met Robin Williams, and that’s how I met Mrs Doubtfire. And I had the time of my life. Every day was just sheer magic with the man.”
These days, Brosnan’s memory of Mrs Doubtfire can’t help but be tinged with a touch of melancholy. After the brilliant star died in 2014, Brosnan was asked by Conan O’Brien about his time working with Williams, and it was clear how much he missed him. However, instead of being sad, he decided to reminisce about a funny moment they had on set while shooting the scene in which his character is choking on a prawn. Mrs Doubtfire jumps up to give him a comically violent Heimlich Maneuver – and the whole time, Williams was improvising inappropriate jokes in Brosnan’s ear.
“He just let it rip, he was so foul-mouthed and funny,” Brosnan chuckled. “Sexual innuendos, you name it.” He then did his best imitation of Williams as Mrs Doubtfire with her lilting Scottish accent saying, “Ooh, she likes a lot of rubber! Ooh, she likes a good spanking!” Brosnan admitted that he spent the entire scene trying to stick to the script, but Williams had “gone completely off to Pluto and back again.” In the end, he was too busy laughing to do anything but let Williams cook, and he shrugged, “How could I compete with him?”
Ultimately, his magic time on Mrs Doubtfire improved Brosnan’s life and career immeasurably. He went from struggling in TV movies to being cast as James Bond only two years later, and the rest is history. As for Williams, he said, “He was a very generous, kind-hearted human being” before admitting “it was a mighty blow” to lose him.
