The Untold Truth Of Mrs. Doubtfire

Who doesn't love "Mrs. Doubtfire"? After all, the movie stars Robin Williams as Daniel, a father who disguises himself as what he calls "a hip old granny" so he can spend more time with his kids after a divorce.

Of course, it may surprise you to learn that this movie is the product of several happy accidents – not unlike Mrs. Doubtfire herself, whose name sprang from a random newspaper headline glimpsed by Daniel. If the stars (Hollywood and otherwise) hadn't aligned perfectly, we might not have ended up with the "Mrs. Doubtfire" we know and love. We can't help but wonder: what if Tim Allen had been cast in the titular role instead of Robin Williams? What if director Chris Columbus had decided to reinsert a deleted scene that would have changed the entire movie? What if there hadn't been a makeup malfunction on-set to give Williams the idea to improvise an iconic line? With so many factors in the movie that came down to chance, it's astounding that everything managed to click into place.

Let's explore all these little-known stories about the making of "Mrs. Doubtfire."

Robin Williams was such a brilliant improv artist that sometimes the crew of "Mrs. Doubtfire" couldn't keep pace. Director Chris Columbus often kept multiple cameras rolling at once to make sure he wouldn't miss anything that came out of the lead actor's mouth – or the reactions of his fellow cast members. Columbus told Yahoo! that he wanted to capture everyone's "expressions and reactions the first time they ever heard [Williams] say something like that."

Sometimes not even multiple cameras was enough; Columbus also encouraged Williams to do extra takes where he would come up with new lines on the spot. "There was a deal between Robin and myself," said Columbus in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. The arrangement was that Williams would shoot "three scripted takes. And then he would say, 'Then let me play.'" As a result, Columbus would end up with over 20 versions of a single shot – sometimes even more. 

Thankfully for Pierce Brosnan, there was one scene that didn't require too many takes. In the famous "run-by fruiting" scene (where Mrs. Doubtfire pelts Stu with a lime and then feigns innocence), Brosnan was concerned they would need to do dozens of takes. "I thought, 'My God, we're going to be here all day,'" he told the Today Show. To his immense relief, he nailed it on the second try.

The "Mrs. Doubtfire" Full Screen DVD Edition includes over a dozen deleted scenes. If these scenes had been added back in, the film's running time would have been over 150 minutes.

For instance, an entire subplot involving the next-door neighbor Gloria (Polly Holliday) ended up on the cutting-room floor. In the final film, Gloria only appears in two scenes and exists mainly as a plot device. However in earlier versions, she was portrayed as an extremely nosy neighbor trying to intervene on the Hilliards' marriage problems. Daniel gets his revenge on her by convincing her (under the guise of Mrs. Doubtfire) that the secret recipe for a healthy garden is to spray it regularly with urine. While this subplot might have been amusing, it added nothing to the story.

In another deleted scene, Daniel and Miranda (Sally Field) are attending Lydia's spelling bee competition, yet Lydia gets distracted and messes up because her parents are arguing. Afterward, Daniel apologizes to Lydia, who asks her father why he and Miranda can't just "pretend to be happy." Most viewers agree that, despite some very moving dialogue from Daniel, the scene was too much of a downer and would've taken the movie too far away from its (mostly) comedic roots. Besides, the movie works best whenever it focuses on its central conceit: Daniel's new identity as Mrs. Doubtfire and how it brings out the best in him. Showing Daniel out-of-costume, arguing with his wife like always, would have disrupted that forward momentum.

The plot of "Mrs. Doubtfire" is not based on a true story. To our knowledge, nobody in real-life actually lived a double-life as a housekeeper in order to see their children after a divorce. (Robin Williams did go through a divorce, he shared in an interview, but that's where the similarities stop.) However, certain aspects of Mrs. Doubtfire's character were drawn from reality, and the sources of inspiration might surprise you.

Makeup artist Greg Cannom used a black-and-white picture of a woman from the 1940s as a photo reference, and he built the design of Mrs. Doubtfire around it. Meanwhile, the character's name was also borrowed from a real person. Anne Fine, the author of the original book, recalls a shop in her Scottish neighborhood owned by a woman named Annabella Coutts. According to The Scotsman, the shop's sign read "Madame Doubtfire," and Fine loved the name so much she adopted it for her iconic nanny.

For Mrs. Doubtfire's accent, Williams modeled it after the accent of Scottish director Bill Forsythe, says January Media. The voice of the character went through a bit of an evolution. In his initial pass at Mrs. Doubtfire, Williams went for a Margaret Thatcher voice, he explained in a behind-the-scenes interview. However, they quickly realized that would be too harsh for the character, so her voice "softened up as she got softer," until they arrived at the gentle and soothing voice that you hear in the final film.

Unfortunately, we will never get to see a "Mrs. Doubtfire" sequel, after the untimely passing of Robin Williams. According to The Hollywood Reporter, there had been talk of a sequel as early as 2001. Yet it stalled in development hell for years, in part because Williams and Columbus never quite felt like the project would do the original film justice. Still, they came really close to shooting a sequel in 2014, when Fox announced it had greenlit another "Mrs. Doubtfire" movie. "We said for years that we would never do it," Columbus told Entertainment Weekly. "Then somebody came up with a really interesting idea, and we agreed to develop a script." With the loss of Robin Williams, however, the project died; absolutely no one else could fill the shoes of the beloved nanny.

When Mara Wilson (who played Daniel's youngest daughter Natalie) caught wind of the planned sequel, she announced on Twitter that the filmmakers could count her out. Wilson was skeptical of the sequel and had no intentions of participating. "Sequels generally suck unless they were planned as part of a trilogy or series," she wrote, adding that, "I think Doubtfire ended where it needed to end." That's not to say that Wilson regretted participating in the first one. To the contrary, she tweeted, "I'm glad I had the chance to be in it, and I'm proud of what we did, but I don't see how we could do it again."

In one iconic scene, Daniel (as Mrs. Doubtfire) is trying to prepare a fancy dinner for his kids, but his plans go up in smoke after he leans too close to the stovetop and his fake breasts catch fire. Whenever he is done extinguishing his flaming bosom, Daniel remarks, "Look at this! My first day as a woman, and I'm getting hot flashes."

This was not an easy scene to shoot. Robin Williams explained in an interview that there was always the risk that the flames from Mrs. Doubtfire's breasts could shoot up into the stunt double's face. He joked, "I wanted to do [my own stunts], but they said, 'You have to have a stunt man, because if you burn your eyelashes, we're screwed.'" According to January Media, Williams burned his hand after trying to pick up the hot metal spoon, so the filmmakers replaced that shot with another one (sans spoon) in which Mrs. Doubtfire drops a pot of boiling water.

It's worth noting that the "hot flashes" scene was so popular among fans that the original dress Williams wore in this scene – complete with the charred patches on the chest – sold for $27,645 at Propstore.

Whenever some of the "Mrs. Doubtfire" cast reunited on the Today Show for the film's 25th anniversary, they each shared their favorite scene to film.

Matthew Lawrence fondly remembered working on the restaurant scene, saying it was "incredible, just to be at a table with those people." Of course, being an eleven-year-old boy at the time, he also enjoyed the moment where his character caught Mrs. Doubtfire taking a whiz; he recalled being inordinately curious about how the filmmakers would simulate that effect. That scene was also Jakobs' favorite moment from the movie, too. Laughing, she told Today, "Any time you get to brandish a tennis racquet as a weapon at work is kind of fun." Meanwhile, Mara Wilson loved the scene at the birthday party. As far as she was concerned, she might as well have been attending a real party. "We were making a mess," she said. "It was great."

For Brosnan, it was no contest; the "run-by fruiting" scene would win every time. "It just tickles me to no end," he said. He even admitted that he sometimes emails his friends gifs of his character getting beaned in the head with a lime.