Now starring in the Netflix drama “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” Field recalled to “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert that Williams would constantly try and crack up the cast and crew during the San Francisco shoot of the 1993 comedy classic and “everybody would laugh … but me.”
“It drove him mad, actually, because I would never laugh. Ever,” Field said during the show broadcast Wednesday, May 6.
Colbert suggested the two-time Oscar winner may have been “too professional for that.” But Field shook her head and simply said, “it wasn’t funny.”
In the film directed by San Francisco resident Chris Columbus, Field plays Miranda Hillard, the ex-wife of Williams’ Daniel Hillard. When she is granted full custody of their three children, she places an ad for a nanny.
Daniel, a local performer, answers the ad as “Euphegenia Doubtfire,” an elderly British woman, and gets the job. The task of handling his three children in heavy makeup without revealing his identity becomes chaotic, especially after Miranda begins dating an old friend, Stu Denmeyer (Pierce Brosnan).
“Robin was always trying something different to make me laugh,” she said. “It was so unfunny, I can’t even begin to tell you.”
But she admitted she did break once on set.
“Pierce — wonderful Pierce Brosnan — we were sitting at the table at the restaurant and he made a fart noise on his arm and I was gone,” Fields recalled. “(Robin) said, ‘That’s all it took? ’”
Although “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which became a monster box-office hit and an often-streamed classic, is clearly Williams’ show, Columbus has always maintained that Brosnan’s comic contributions to the movie were underrated.
“The amazing thing about Pierce is that when he was in ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ the audience sort of perceived his character as a straight man. But what really sort of stuck with me was how much Pierce is really trained as a comedic actor,” Columbus told the Chronicle in 2025. “His comedic instincts are just amazing, and he was able to keep up with Robin in terms of reaction.”
As for Brosnan, he found the experience of shooting “Mrs. Doubtfire” both extremely challenging, because of Williams’ constant improvising, and rewarding.
“Robin just ran amok. You just had to hold on to your hat because you never knew where it was going to go,” he told the Chronicle in 2023, adding that his co-star was “a dear man. Beautiful man. Brilliant soul.”