![\"Robin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Robin-Williams-Actor-Comedian-2011-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Sat 11 July 2026 17:15, UK <\/p>\n
Acting is as much a game of luck, chance, and opportunity as it is talent and skill, with Robin Williams<\/a> being the main beneficiary of an actor stinking up a part so badly that they walked away from the job.<\/p>\n With his razor-sharp comedic timing, improvisational skills, and increasing popularity on the stand-up circuit, it was only a matter of time before Williams ended up swapping the stage for the screen anyway, because he was simply too talented for Hollywood to ignore.<\/p>\n He still needed to wedge his foot in the door, though, and the first time a massive mainstream audience got a taste of his particular brand of comedy came when he made his first appearance on Happy Days<\/a> in the February 1978 episode \u2018My Favourite Orkan\u2019 during the show\u2019s fifth season, which averaged over 31 million viewers every week.<\/p>\n The character was so popular that seven months later, the Williams-fronted spinoff Mork & Mindy premiered, and by the end of its first season, with an average weekly viewership of almost 29 million, it was the third most-watched show on American television. And to think, he wasn\u2019t even the first guy hired for the role.<\/p>\n Dom DeLuise and Roger Rees both turned it down when the part was offered their way, with John Byner eventually agreeing to what Happy Days creator Garry Marshall called \u201ca tentative deal to star in the series,\u201d but at the last minute, Byner decided that \u201che didn\u2019t want to play an alien on a television series\u201d and dropped out, with the search forced to begin all over again.<\/p>\n That eventually led them to Williams, and after an audition that blew everyone away<\/a>, he was hired as Mork. As Anson Williams, who played Potsie on the show, recalled, \u201cMork & Mindy was like the worst script in the history of Happy Days,\u201d describing the teleplay as \u201cunreadable; it was so bad\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, they hire some guy for Mork; bad actor, bad part,\u201d the actor elaborated on the first person hired to run through the script, which would have been Byner. \u201cHe was horrible!\u201d Regardless of the quality of the script, Williams was a force of nature who showed throughout his career that he was capable of polishing a few turds, and if it hadn\u2019t been for the last-minute dropout, the role wouldn\u2019t have been his.<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n It was, and it proved so successful that he got his own show out of the deal, which ran for four seasons, turned him into one of the highest-paid performers on episodic television, won him a Golden Globe for \u2018Best Actor \u2013 Television Series Musical or Comedy\u2019, and opened the industry\u2019s eyes to the increasingly undeniable fact that a brand-new superstar was in their midst.<\/p>\n As far as sliding doors moments go, it was a pretty big one, and if it hadn\u2019t been for that \u201chorrible\u201d actor deciding that Mork wasn\u2019t for them, who knows how, when, or where<\/a> Williams path to superstardom would have started instead.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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