The actors played a couple going through a split in the 1993 comedy.
Key Points
- Sally Field says Robin Williams, her costar in the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire, was always trying to make her laugh on the set.
- Everyone else was entertained, but Field said she hadn't found Williams' jokes funny.
- The Steel Magnolias star ended up laughing at a fart joke from costar Pierce Brosnan.
The late Robin Williams was best known for making people laugh, but apparently not Sally Field, his costar in the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire.
Field said she was the only person who wasn't cracking up and even ruining scenes, and "it drove him mad, actually."
"Because I would never laugh, ever," the actress said Wednesday on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. "And everybody else was laughing and carrying on."
Colbert asked if she had been too professional for that, but that wasn't it.
"It wasn't funny," Field said, to which the comedian enjoyed his own chuckle. "It just wasn't funny."
Another costar eventually managed to amuse the Steel Magnolias star.
"Robin was always trying something different to make me laugh. It was so unfunny. I can't begin to tell you," Field said. "And then Pierce — wonderful Pierce Brosnan — we were sitting at a table at the restaurant, and he made a fart noise on his arm. And I was gone. That was it."
Williams' response to her breaking up over Brosnan's childish gag: "That's all it took?"
In the comedy, Field portrayed Miranda, the wife of Williams' character, Daniel, who never took anything seriously, so Miranda always felt like the bad guy while raising their three children and maintaining a career.
When they split, Daniel went undercover as an enchanting nanny, Mrs. Doubtfire, in order to spend time with the kids, who were played by Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence, and Mara Wilson.
Brosnan appeared as Miranda's slick new suitor, Stuart.
Looking back on his own experience with Williams, Lawrence recalled in 2025 that he had a fantastic time filming with the Mork & Mindy alum. In particular, the birthday party scene when Miranda isn't home was "so much fun" to film, Lawrence said during a June 2025 appearance on his Brotherly Love podcast.
"First of all, they asked me, 'What would you like at your party?' And I said animals. I gave 'em a list of music, and they just made it happen," Lawrence said. "And then Robin's like, 'We're gonna jump on this table.' It was kind of just impromptu, 'We're gonna jump on this table and dance right now,' and I was like, 'Yeah, heck yeah. I wanna dance with Robin right now.'"
Mrs. Doubtfire turned out to be a big hit, earning $441 million worldwide at the box office.
Williams went on to make audiences laugh or even cry in Hollywood film classics like The Birdcage, Night at the Museum, Death to Smoochy, and Good Will Hunting until his death in 2014.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
