Featured Image Credit: Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images for Hollywood Film Festival / 20th Century Studios
Topics: Film and TV, Robin Williams
Bec Oakes
Topics: Film and TV, Robin Williams
Robin Williams' on-screen daughter has revealed that the late actor defended her when she was expelled from school.
During his life, Robin Williams played a whole host of iconic characters, from Dead Poets Society's John Keating to the Genie in Aladdin.
But perhaps one of his most beloved roles was that of Mrs Doubtfire in the 1993 classic of the same name.
Following a bitter divorce, Daniel Hillard (Williams) disguises himself as Mrs Doubtfire, an elderly housekeeper, in order to spend time with his three children, played by Matthew Lawrence, Lisa Jakub and Mara Wilson.
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Now, Jakub, 45, who played Williams' eldest daughter Lydia, has shared his 'amazing' gesture after she was expelled from school during the movie's filming.
"I got thrown out of high school on Doubtfire," Jakub said on her screen sibling Matthew Lawrence's podcast, explaining that she was missing too much school due to the filming schedule.
"I'm Canadian. I was attending high school in Canada, then I left for four months to film the movie. We were going to set up this system, pre-internet, where I'd mail my school work back and forth to the school. We did that for a while."
However, the school suddenly decided that the system wasn't going to work. "My school in Canada sent a note saying, 'You know, this isn’t working for us anymore. Don't come back.'"
Jakub was heartbroken at the news and shared how Williams noticed she was upset on set.
She added: "The amazing thing was Robin saw that I was upset. He asked me what was going on. I explained."
Then, he wrote a personal letter to her principal defending the young actress.
"He wrote a letter to my principal saying that he wanted them to rethink this decision, that I was just trying to pursue my education and my career at the same time and could they please support me in this."
Unfortunately, Williams' touching gesture wasn't enough to get Jakub readmitted, she said that her principal had proudly displayed the letter in his office.
"This principal got the letter, framed the letter, put it up in the office… and didn't ask me to come back."
Elsewhere in the podcast, she praised Williams as an actor.
"I'd been working for a decade when I started Doubtfire, but we had always used a script. I knew when it was my turn to speak," she explained.
"Then you go on set with Robin, and it's like who the f**k knows what's going to happen now? And so you had to be really present. I had to be present with the other person in the room and I actually had to listen.
"You're just going to go with it because he's Robin, and you can trust him."