Robin Williams’ on-set “antics” on Mork & Mindy revealed in new book.
Robin Williams will undoubtedly be fondly remembered by film fans as an actor capable of outrageous comedy one minute and chilling drama the next. His big breakthrough of course came in a lead role in TV’s Mork & Mindy. However, his on-set shenanigans may not have sat well in today’s climate.
In a new book titled Robin, which has been penned by New York Times journalist Dave Itzkoff and re-produced in The Daily Mail, his TV co-star Pam Dawber and show’s producers have revealed what it was like working with Williams. Dawber remarked that he did “The grossest things to her” in between takes, but was quick to add that she never took offence or was upset by his antics;
“I had the grossest things done to me by him. And I never took offence. I mean I was flashed, humped, bumped, grabbed. I think he probably did it to a lot of people… but it was so much fun.
Somehow he had that magic. If you put it on paper you would be appalled. But somehow he had this guileless little thing that he would do – those sparkly eyes. He’d look at you, really playful, like a puppy, all of a sudden. And then he’d grab your t*ts and then run away. And somehow he could get away with it. It was the Seventies, after all.”
Show Producer Howard Storm also contributed to the book;
“He’d be doing a paragraph and in the middle of it he would just turn and grab her ass. Or grab a breast. And we’d start again. It was just Robin being Robin, and he thought it would be funny. He could get away with murder.”
Fellow producer Garry Marshall added;
“He would take all his clothes off, he would be standing there totally naked and she was trying to act. His aim in life was to make Pam Dawber blush.”
Mork and Mindy was a global hit and ran from 1978 to 1982, launching Williams into superstardom. The actor sadly passed away in 2014, taking his own life at his home. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with a severe nerve condition, said to be linked to dementia. He was 63 years old.