The TV show Robin Williams loved so much he crashed the set uninvited: “I wandered down”
Any high-profile production employs stringent security measures to guarantee, for the most part, that every set is safeguarded from invaders and unwanted interlopers. However, exceptions can be made if that uninvited guest happens to be Robin Williams checking out one of his favourite TV shows.
With his razor-sharp comedic mind and endlessly imaginative riffing, the actor and comedian was almost impossible to rein in when he was on one of his own sets. With that in mind, it makes sense that nobody was able to stop him using his downtime to investigate the mysterious goings-on in a series that became one of the most anticipated weekly events on his viewing calendar.
Then again, it helped that he was also Robin Williams. If an A-list star of that magnitude decides he’s going to sneak onto another project for a quick look, even the most dedicated security team in the world wouldn’t rugby tackle him to the ground and drag him away kicking and screaming for daring to trespass.
David Duchovny’s feature-length directorial debut, the 2004 coming-of-age dramedy House of D, isn’t exactly a memorable movie. In fact, it’s a pretty terrible one, with the actor, who also wrote the screenplay, hardly underlining his credentials as the next great multi-hyphenate with a dismal and saccharine story that took a pounding from critics and cratered at the box office.
However, Williams, who played the second lead behind Duchovny in the picture, was at least allowed to reminisce about the first time they crossed paths a decade previously. “I met him once in Vancouver,” he told Cinema Confidential. “He was doing The X-Files and I was doing Jumanji.”
“I wandered down this main street and said, ‘Can I meet…?’ And they said, ‘Yeah’. And they came up, and the crew member said, ‘Robin Williams wants to meet you’. And he went, ‘Yeah, right. Bullshit’. I went, ‘Hi, Mr Duchovny. Hi, Fox! You’re really groovy. Where’s Mulder?’ I met him then and then a couple of times afterwards at different fundraisers and stuff.”
He wasn’t just there for shits and giggles, though, with Williams responding unequivocally when asked if he was a fan of The X-Files. “Oh, big time,” he declared. “Especially the first couple of years, when it was the creepiest. The horror episodes and a lot of the alien possession.”
There are many perks of being a movie star, and crashing the set of a favourite TV show is just one of them. It worked out in Williams’ favour that he was filming Jumanji in the same city that The X-Files called home for its first five seasons, and instead of watching it from afar, he was able to get up close and personal with Mulder, Scully, and their latest monster of the week.
