Robin Williams likes to work without a safety net. His shows are completely improvised: just the irrepressible Williams onstage in front of an audience – who are usually howling with laughter. No canned jokes, no dress rehearsal, no repeating funny lines that worked last time. Likewise, his movie roles always start with a script, but directors and millions of fans have come to count on Williams – and his peculiar genius for improvisation – to make them laugh (or cry), often when they least expect it.
And since his early days on TV as Mork from Ork, Williams, now 54, has seldom disappointed. From a homeless man suffering from dementia in The Fisher King to a divorced father who dresses up as a nanny in Mrs Doubtfire, he’s tackled characters of every stripe. His newest role, as Bob Munro in RV, sees him in full comedy mode in a movie about a workaholic father who takes his family on a business trip in a motorhome.
Over the years, journalists who interview Williams have learnt to expect the unexpected. So at Reader’s Digest we were prepared to be greeted by Williams reciting the Gettysburg Address as James Brown using a Croatian accent while performing a German slap dance. Instead, we met a subdued, very normal man – who happens to be abnormally funny.
RD: You trained at Juilliard, a very serious acting school. When did you start concentrating on comedy?
Williams: I left school and couldn’t find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I’ve always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden it was just me and the audience.
RD: What’s that like, working in front of a live audience?
Williams: It’s frightening and exhilarating. It’s like combat. Look at the metaphors: you kill when it works; you die when it doesn’t.
RD: You bomb.
Williams: Bombing is bad. Killing is good.
RD: There are different kinds of humorists – political, observational. How would you define your humour?
Williams: It’s kind of the lazy-Susan effect. It has samples of all – blue, some very personal observations, some political observations, some world observations, some making fun of the celebrity world, and its insanity and hype. It kind of goes everywhere.
