Harvey Weinstein Recounts Robin Williams' 'Good Will Hunting' Prank
Of Robin Williams’ many memorable moments onscreen during his Oscar-winning performance in Good Will Hunting, it’s his unfilmed scenes that Harvey Weinstein remembers most — specifically, his prank.
While visiting CBS This Morning with Katie Holmes on Thursday to chat about The Giver, Weinstein — who gave an impromptu tribute during the film’s premiere in New York City, just hours after news spread — reflected on the beloved actor, who died Monday at age 63. “It’s been a tough week to collect your thoughts and to think about those implications, because, when you knew Robin, he made everybody else’s life so good,” he told Charlie Rose. “He was just so funny and so bright, for you. And if you made a movie with him, he was so good for the crew.”
[Related: Watch Robin Williams's Best Ad-Libbed Movie Moments]
He continued on to recount a time on the set of Good Will Hunting with Gus Van Zandt and a naive Stellan Skarsgard. “He played the opposite professor to Robin Williams — it was, like, his first role, he had just gotten off the boat from Sweden, he’s a very famous actor there, [but] never did an American movie,” Weinstein explained of Skarsgard at the time. “And Robin says to Gus and me, ‘Let’s welcome him to America. I’m going to change the script, and Gus, you tell him it’s all about improvisation.’
Williams and Skarsgard (Photo: Everett Collection)
"So here's this scene about mathematic formulas, and Robin comes out and goes, 'Jack Nicholson,' and then he does Jack Nicholson. And then Gus, he's pointing to Stellan, and he's in a state of shock like a deer, and then he does Jack and he does Bob De Niro doing the scene, and he's, like, doing 15 things, and the crew is totally straight-faced while Gus is shooting. And then Stellan starts to ad lib this Swedish gibberish, because he's so lost in the scene. And then when Gus yells, 'Cut,' 180 members of the crew exploded with laughter, and Stellan looked around and goes, 'What happened to me?' And Robin told him what was going on. Every day was like that with him."
He added of highly improvised takes with Williams, "We'd say, one for Robin, one for us, where he'd do the script. But inevitably, there was always something that he added to that film, right on the spot. Just a brilliant mind at work. ... I think for Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro, and there are people that were so close to him, I just — I emailed Billy last night. It's just too tough for a lot of people to deal with. This is just a shock."
Watch a video tribute to Williams below:
