The only role Robin Williams swore he would never play again: “I think they know better”
Most big-name actors will reprise at least one role during their career, and it’s usually for the money. There’s nothing wrong with that when everyone has bills to pay, but it wasn’t something that seemed to entice Robin Williams very much.
The studios were probably banging down his door to try and get him to star in follow-ups to his biggest hits, but he only played one character in live-action more than once, and his appearances in the Night at the Museum trilogy were little more than glorified cameos.
The only other time he returned to the well was as the Genie in the straight-to-video sequel Aladdin and the King of Thieves after he mended his fences with Disney. Plenty of the star’s most famous films were ripe with franchise potential, but Williams preferred doing something new to repeating himself.
On several occasions, he admitted that he would have been open to a second Mrs Doubtfire if the script was strong enough, and those discussions were ongoing at the time of his death in 2014. In the end, Theodore Roosevelt holds the unique distinction of being the sole character Williams embodied multiple times in a big-screen release.
As mentioned, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The way Hollywood works is that the most successful pictures are quickly monopolised into multi-film sagas, but there’s no point in making a sequel to a Robin Williams flick without Robin Williams. One of the industry’s shiniest new toys is also nostalgia, with reunions, revivals, and reboots still all the rage.
That’s where he drew the line, though. When he was asked point-blank if he’d ever consider dusting off the suspenders for a Mork & Mindy reunion, Williams couldn’t have made himself any clearer: “No.” Bristling at the mere suggestion, he hinted that he’d been posed that exact question multiple times by the people in charge over the years, and his answer was always the same.
“I think that they know better,” he told Black Film. “I wouldn’t do it. I mean, for me, it was a great memory and a wonderful time.” As far as he was concerned, his association with Mork & Mindy ended in May 1982 when the 95th and final episode of the hit sitcom aired. After that, he washed his hands of the whole thing.
Because the folks in the boardroom can’t help themselves, Williams, as Mork, eventually returned to the screen, albeit with a sizeable caveat. In 2005, the made-for-TV biopic Behind the Camera: The Unauthorised Story of Mork & Mindy premiered, with Chris Diamantopoulos leading the cast.
It would have been an easy and undemanding gig for Williams to dust off his extraterrestrial from the planet Ork, but there was nothing anybody could do to change his mind and convince him it was worth doing.
