Robin Williams Did Private Standup For Spielberg To Cheer Him Up During ‘Schindler’s List”
Robin Williams and Steven Spielberg in 2010. Image by Getty Images
Imagine what hell it must be to make a movie, write a book, or put together any piece of work about the Holocaust. Full immersion in the facts of mass genocide for months or years on end is psychological torture, whatever accolades or payment one may receive for it. Reflecting on the making of “Schindler’s List,” perhaps the most popular and enduring portrayal of the Holocaust ever shown on screen, Steven Spielberg said that comedian Robin Williams helped him stay emotionally well during the making of the movie.
Speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival on the 25th anniversary of the movie, Spielberg recalled that while he was shooting the film in Poland, Williams would call him on the phone once a week, always at the same time. “He would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone,” Spielberg said. “I would laugh hysterically … he’d always hang up on you on the loudest, best laugh you’d give him. Drops the mic, that’s it.” Spielberg said he and other members of the set also used episodes of “Saturday Night Live” to relax after days on set, where he said, “There was trauma everywhere.” In attempting to capture the traumas of the Holocaust, the director recalled, he and his cast and crew became traumatized. Williams, who Spielberg knew from directing him in the movie “Hook,” was indispensable.
On an “ask me anything” session on the website Reddit in 2013, just a year before his death, Williams confirmed the story, saying that he only called Spielberg “once, maybe twice.” Williams said that he joked that he was raising money for “a society devoted to helping raise money to help older Germans who had forgotten everything before 1945” and that he remembered Spielberg laughing and thanking him.
“Robin knew what I was going through,” the director said.
Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
