Zelda Williams Opens Up About ‘Alienating and Difficult’ Period After Dad Robin’s Death
Zelda Williams opens up about the loss of her dad, a time she described as “alienating.” (Photo: Getty Images)
Life goes on. Nearly two years after Robin Williams’s shocking suicide, his daughter, Zelda Williams, is starring on a new summer TV series — and opening up about getting through her tremendous personal heartbreak.
“I was really appreciative of the fact that everyone loved Dad so much, but [I] did get looked at like a butterfly that you were going to damage, and that’s in its own way sweet, but also alienating and difficult,” the Dead of Summer actress, 26, told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview.
Zelda, who briefly quit Twitter following her dad’s death after trolls made crude comments about his suicide, continued, “I had an enormous amount of time to myself.”
Zelda and her father were very close. We got a glimpse of that in their Nintendo ads as he talked about picking out the name Zelda, for the princess in the video game, before she was even born. However, she told the magazine that while they once shared a scene in the 2004 movie House of D, they really didn’t discuss the business or her acting ambitions when they spent time together.
“Maybe out of stubbornness, but also out of independence, I never asked him for a road map — I didn’t want the curiosity to be dampened for me,” she said. “I had to figure this out before he was gone, and now I definitely have to figure it out on my own. But I’m enjoying that process.”
Zelda and Robin Williams on the red carpet together. (Photo: Getty Images)
She said that now that she’s coming into her own, it breaks her heart that he won’t be able to see her achievements — and growing confidence in herself.
“It’s interesting,” said Zelda, who got a tattoo in honor of her dad two months after he passed away. “He missed out on me being proud of myself by about a year and a half, and that’s the one thing that’s really sad for me, because I know he was always proud of me. I think he would’ve loved that I was happy.”
Last year, on the first anniversary of Robin’s death, Zelda paid tribute to him in a post on Instagram. In it she said, “I live my sadness every day, but I don’t resent it anymore.”
Robin was found dead in his Tiburon, Calif., home on Aug. 11, 2014. The Oscar-winning star of Good Will Hunting had been living with depression and Lewy body dementia. He had also recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Zelda and her siblings, Cody and Zachary, initially had a dispute with their father’s third wife, Susan Schneider Williams, over his estate, the bulk of which they inherited. However, it was settled last fall.
