In a 2015 interview with Yahoo! Movies, Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus joked that Robin Williams’s off-color improvisation during the filming of the 1993 comedy resulted in there being four different cuts: “literally, a PG-rated version of the film, PG-13, R, and NC-17,” he said at the time. When Williams’s co-star, Mara Wilson, was asked about the supposed NC-17 cut the following year, she was quoted as saying, “I don’t know about NC-17, but with some of the things he said, I’m sure there was probably an R [rated] cut somewhere.” However, a few years later, a viral tweet about Columbus’s earlier comments sent the internet into a frenzy.
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2021, Columbus admitted he was only kidding about the NC-17 rating, but confirmed they ended up with several distinct versions of the film to draw from. He went on to explain that Williams would do a few scripted takes of each scene before asking Columbus to let him “play.”
From there, Williams did anywhere from 15 to 22 improvised takes, with 22 being the most Columbus remembered. Every one of those takes included new lines, according to Columbus.
The Secret R-Rated ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Footage Is Sitting in a Warehouse Somewhere
Sometimes, this alternate dialogue was well beyond what would be acceptable for a PG-13 movie. Wilson made a point in her previous interview to clarify that Williams always kept things clean in front of the child actors, though. Pierce Brosnan, on the other hand, recalled Williams getting “quite colorful” while they were filming the restaurant scene, which reportedly took a week to finish. Overall, Columbus revealed that they used roughly 2 million feet of film, and it’s now sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
As for whether that extra footage will ever see the light of day, Columbus expressed interest in editing some of it into a documentary showcasing what an R-rated version would’ve been like. The only issue is that he doesn’t know exactly what the outtakes contain because he’s so familiar with the final cut at this point. But a documentary is likely our best bet at seeing any of the R-rated stuff in the future.
“I’m in a good place with Mrs. Doubtfire, so there’s really no reason to do the definitive cut,” Columbus said in conclusion. “The definitive cut of Mrs. Doubtfire is out in the world right now.”
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