A Mrs. Doubtfire star is sharing how the late Robin Williams went above and beyond for her, both on and off-screen.
On a recent episode of the Brotherly Love podcast, alongside her Mrs. Doubtfire co-stars Mara Wilson and Matthew Lawrence, Lisa Jakub, who played Lydia Hillard in the hit 1993 comedy, recalled Williams coming to her defense regarding an issue at her school.
Jakub said she was still attending high school in Canada while away for four months, filming Mrs. Doubtfire. “We were going to set up this system, pre-internet, where I’d mail my school work back and forth to the school. We did that for a while,” she explained.
“As Matt well remembers, we had tutoring, three hours of schoolwork on set every day,” the actress continued. “We were a couple of months into filming, and my school in Canada sent a note saying, ‘This isn’t working for us anymore, don’t come back.’ Yeah, 9th grade. I was devastated. It was just so heartbreaking, because I had this life that was very unusual and that was the one normal thing.”
However, Jakub said once Williams, who died in 2014, saw how it impacted her, he took matters into his own hands.
“It was a really difficult thing,” she remembered. “The amazing thing was Robin saw that I was upset — he asked me what was going on. He wrote a letter to my principal saying that he wanted them to rethink this decision and that I was just trying to pursue my education and career at the same time, and could they please support me in this.”
Though she greatly appreciated Williams’ efforts, they were ultimately unsuccessful. “The principal got the letter, framed the letter, put it up in the office, and didn’t ask me to come back,” Jakub added. “Amazing.”
Lawrence later added during the Mrs. Doubtfire reunion on the podcast that Williams also wrote a letter of recommendation to help him get into the University of Southern California.
In the Chris Columbus–directed film, Jakub, Lawrence and Wilson play a trio of siblings. The movie follows Williams, who disguises himself as a female housekeeper so he can spend time with his children held in custody by his former wife, Miranda Hillard (Sally Field).
Mrs. Doubtfire not only became a box office success but also won the best makeup Oscar at the 1994 Academy Awards.