Therapy for Williams is really funny stuff
He jumped at the chance to Sit Down
It seems classic Robin Williams.
On the phone to promote Friday’s charity show at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium to support the Owen Hart Foundation, the comedian and Oscar-winning actor is in the midst of discussing an upcoming project by Monty Python alumni Terry Jones, in which he has been enlisted to provide the voice of a dog.
But in a fit of free association, his mind jumps back to an earlier part of the conversation about an impromptu standup set he did during a 2005 Waterkeeper Alliance event at Fairmont Banff Springs. He was reminded that, to honour Canada’s bilingualism, he did half the routine in somewhat dodgy French. Suddenly, the two thoughts merge.
“A French dog would be pretty cool, too,” he says, quickly breaking into a sleazy French accent. “‘I’m licking my a--. Why not? It’s kind of a sorbet ...’ ”
It’s a rare manic moment for Williams, who is friendly but unusually subdued during the interview. Perhaps it’s an awareness that his frenzied comedy doesn’t comfortably translate into print, or perhaps it’s simply because he is in a reflective mood as he tours with fellow comedian David Steinberg discussing his life and career. Still, despite its name, Friday’s Evening of Sit Down with Robin Williams & David Steinberg will no doubt be anything but calm.
Steinberg is a Winnipeg-born comedian and director who is probably best known for his many appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. A few years back, Williams appeared on his Sit Down Comedy cable show and enjoyed the experience enough to join Steinberg on the road.
“We’ve done it a bunch of times and we always change it,” Williams says. “It’s pretty free-form, there’s no set chronological order. We have certain things we know we’ve talked about before and a lot of times we talk about new stuff, which is kind of wonderful.”
Williams has described it as “sitdown therapy,” which suggests the conversation might occasionally drift into dramatic territory for the comedian, who appears to be emerging from a period of personal upheaval.
“It is a bit like (therapy), without offering advice,” he said. “A friend once said interviews are like oneway therapy where you talk and no one offers counsel.”
So far, nothing has been deemed out of bounds during the conversation, Williams says.
“We talk about lots of different things,” he says. “Going through the different phases: Drugs. Alcohol. Going to rehab in wine country. Little things like that.”
In 2006, Williams checked himself into an Oregon facility for alcohol addiction. He had fallen off the wagon after spending more than 20 years sober. In 2009, he underwent open-heart surgery. A year later he divorced his wife of 21 years and remarried a year after that.
But professionally, he seems to be on the cusp of a career renaissance.
This year he guest-starred on two cable shows he admires, Louis C.K.’s Louie and FX’s Wilfrid. Williams is also attached to at least five films in various stages of production. Along with voicing a possibly French dog in Jones’ Absolutely Anything, he will also be playing Dwight Eisenhower in Lee Daniels’ 2013 drama The Butler. He will be reuniting with Awakenings co-star Robert De Niro for the comedy The Big Wedding and will join Mila Kunis and Peter Dinklage in The Angriest Man in Brooklyn and Annette Bening in Look of Love, which have both been described as comedy-dramas.
“There’s a nice mix of small and big, which is nice,” he says.
Williams has always been more versatile than he is given credit for, having played everything from the philosophical murderer in the thriller Insomnia, to Popeye, to a goofy doctor in Patch Adams. He has been nominated for four Oscars and won in 1997 for his role of Matt Damon’s troubled counsellor in Good Will Hunting. At Juilliard, he studied under formidable BritishAmerican thespian John Houseman with the aim of becoming a dramatic theatre actor.
“That was the hope,” Williams says. “That was the training. That was the whole idea, that you would have that ability. I think initially Houseman was saying (concentrate) on the theatre and the idea was that other things would appear later. But basically we should be soldiers in the army of the theatre. And then, a year later, we saw him selling Volvos.”
An Evening of Sit Down with Robin Williams and David Steinberg takes place Friday, Dec. 7 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. The event is sold out.