The performance Robin Williams compared to being under “demonic possession”
Although there’s always a temptation to typecast Robin Williams or attach him to one specific genre, he was actually one of the most diverse actors of his generation.
It might not have been something that he consciously planned out from the beginning, but most of Williams’ career was defined by his immense ability to alternate between different genres, mainly comedy and drama, each proving that he was just as efficient at one as the other. At certain points, these oscillations naturally made people assume that Williams was gradually veering towards one and abandoning the other.
However, even when it seemed as though he was doing more drama work than his beloved comedy, he maintained that it wasn’t about anything other than the quality of the opportunities themselves, and whether they could allow him to flex all of his muscles and delight audiences as much as they delighted him as an actor.
Which is also probably why, when it comes to Williams’ legacy, most people do tend to gravitate towards his comedy work, especially as those ones – Mrs Doubtfire, Flubber, RV – are the ones that show off all of Robin’s acting abilities, from his unmatched improvisational skills to his innate ability to seem come across completely organically on screen, no matter the scenario.
Mrs Doubtfire, especially, was an extensive display of Williams’ improvisational excellence, with most of its charm hinging on the reactions of those around him. In fact, director Chris Columbus even had multiple cameras set up around him so that whenever he struck comedy cold, the reactions of the other actors would immediately be caught from each angle. This also meant that there was eventually so much of Williams’ improvisation that they ran out of tape, culminating in two million feet of film.
That said, this was very much the approach that Williams took before they even started shooting. The voice for Mrs Doubtfire, for instance, was concocted in preproduction when he started toying with different options before landing on the right one. As Columbus recalled to Business Insider, “Robin started playing around with the voice, but with him, it doesn’t take a long time to get the voice. He probably had it within ten minutes, and we all agreed that’s exactly how Mrs Doubtfire should sound.”
For Williams, establishing the right voice was the obstacle he needed to overcome to be able to do the rest, which he once described as “demonic possession”. Recalling the experience to Parade in 2013, he said: “[It was a] bit like demonic possession. Once in the right makeup and finding that voice, I was so freed up. You know, that very sweet voice.”
He went on, “Initially, she sounded like Margaret Thatcher. Scared the hell out of children. I went, no, no. Make her very soft, and very dear, and say horrible things in that soft voice. The idea of that film, which literally came from a divorce counsellor in my first marriage, was, ‘Don’t use your children as little hostages. Just treat them with love and respect and you can get through this.’”
According to Columbus, everything came together after they decided on the voice, and while some parts changed when it came to shooting, the essence that was built around that remained the same. In fact, according to the director, the only thing that made it all come together in the end was the glasses – once he put them on, they knew they had the character in its full form.
