Robin groped and flashed me... but we had so much fun, says Mork co-star
HE WAS one of the most beloved comedians of his generation, but Robin Williams has joined the list of Hollywood stars accused of sexual harassment.
Williams groped his Mork and Mindy co-star Pam Dawber as his madcap sense of humour crossed the line, a biography of the star claims.
Miss Dawber said Williams repeatedly grabbed her bottom and breasts and stripped naked during the filming of the hit show, which ran from 1978 to 1982.
But Miss Dawber, who played Mindy alongside Williams’ Mork, says she never took offence because the show was ‘so much fun’, adding: ‘It was the 70s, after all.’
Her unfazed reaction will raise eyebrows among members of the MeToo movement, which is encouraging victims of sexual harassment to speak out.
New York Times journalist Dave Itzkoff interviewed Miss Dawber for his book Robin, which is out later this year. The comedian committed suicide in 2014 at the age of 63, following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. He had also battled depression for much of his life.
Mork and Mindy, in which Williams played an alien from the planet Ork, made a star of the comic genius and launched a Hollywood career that would include films such as Mrs Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Jumanji and Good Morning, Vietnam.
Miss Dawber, 66, told Mr Itzkoff that Williams was ‘such a nice person’ and had a ‘gigantic heart’. They ‘just clicked’ and she became the big sister that he never had, she said. But many of Williams’ improvisations on set were sexual in nature and directed at women.
Miss Dawber said: ‘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.
‘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**s and then run away. And somehow he could get away with it. It was the 70s, after all.’
The show’s late producer Garry Marshall is also quoted, saying: ‘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.’ Howard Storm, the show’s director, added: ‘He’d be doing a paragraph and in the middle of it he would just turn and grab her a**. Or grab a breast. And we’d start again. I’d say, “Robin, there’s nothing in the script that says you grab Pam’s a**”. And he’d say, “Oh, okay”.’
Storm also recalled the time Williams ‘goosed’ a veteran actress who played Mindy’s grandmother by putting a cane between her buttocks.
He said: ‘I’m standing there watching this and I’m thinking, “oh my God”, and I just laughed.
‘There was nothing lascivious about it, in his mind. It was just Robin being Robin, and he thought it would be funny. He could get away with murder.’