Robin Williams wrote letter to principal who kicked “Mrs. Doubtfire” child star out of school during filming
Lisa Jakub recalled Williams going to bat for her after she said a Canadian high school expelled her over complications with her on-set education.
As the late Robin Williams expressed at the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, family holds ties that bind — which he proved to his child costar Lisa Jakub while filming the 1993 comedy hit.
During a Mrs. Doubtfire cast reunion on the Brotherly Love podcast with Mara Wilson and Matthew Lawrence — who played Jakub's siblings and the children of parents played by Williams and Sally Field — Jakub recalled an instance when Williams came to her defense over her education.
"I got thrown out of high school on Doubtfire," Jakub told her costars. "I'm Canadian. I was attending high school in Canada, then I left for four months to film the movie. 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 continued, "As Matt well remembers, we had tutoring, three hours of schoolwork on set every day. 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."
Jakub said that Williams, who died in 2014, attempted to help her re-enroll in the school by writing a letter to its administration.
"It was a really difficult thing," said Jakub. "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. The principal got the letter, framed the letter, put it up in the office, and didn't ask me to come back. Amazing."
Lawrence said later on the show that Williams helped him further his education as well. He, too, was kicked out of school, though his onscreen dad wrote a letter of recommendation to help him get into the University of Southern California.
Jakub attended college at the University of Virginia after leaving Hollywood at the age of 22, without a high school education. She said her past followed her later in life, particularly during one course.
"I took a statistics class," Jakub recalled, "and when I got [a grade] back, the TA had written: 'Dear Doubtfire Girl, you got a B-.'"
But she got a solid education from Williams in the art of acting.
"We had always used a script, so I knew when it was my turn to speak I could say my line. Then you go on set with Robin and it's like, who the f--- knows what's going to happen now?" Jakub said, laughing. "You had to be really present, so it was a meditation where I couldn't just wait for someone else to say their line so I could say my line. I had to be present with the other person in the room and actually had to listen and then just respond. It really was so much more meditative than what I'd done before, which always felt really rote."
Courtesy Everett Collection
The cast of 'Mrs. Doubtfire'Jakub, Lawrence, and Wilson played a trio of siblings in the Chris Columbus–directed classic, which followed Williams as their father who, amid a bitter divorce, hatches a scheme to see them every day by dressing up as an elderly British woman and taking a job as their nanny.
In addition to being one of Williams' signature films, Mrs. Doubtfire earned $441 million at the worldwide box office before winning an Oscar for Best Makeup at the 1994 Academy Awards.
Listen to Wilson, Lawrence, and Jakub's Mrs. Doubtfire reunion on the Brotherly Love podcast episode above.
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