{"id":784986,"date":"2026-07-26T05:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T05:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784986\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T05:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T05:41:13","slug":"robin-williams-how-jumanji-movie-star-defended-child-actors-bradley-pierce-and-kirsten-dunst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784986\/","title":{"rendered":"Robin Williams: How Jumanji movie star defended child actors Bradley Pierce and Kirsten Dunst"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It has been almost 12 years since the death of Robin Williams<\/a> shook the entertainment world \u2013 and this week would have been the actor\u2019s 75th birthday. <\/p>\n

Since the actor\u2019s death in 2014<\/a>, anecdotes about his many good deeds have continued to surface<\/a>, including from Jumanji child star Bradley Pierce, who revealed how the actor stepped in to defend him from over-demanding producers. <\/p>\n

Alongside Kirsten Dunst, Pierce played one of the kids in the 1995 family film. In 2020, he recalled shooting a sequence in which the titular game leads to a fierce monsoon. <\/p>\n

\"'Jumanji'‘Jumanji’ actor Bradley Pierce says Robin Williams defended him on set (YouTube \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The actor, who was 13 at the time, was having trouble breathing in the scene due to the water and his extensive makeup. In the film, his character is transformed into a monkey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t breathe through my nose,\u201d he told CBCListen<\/a>, adding that the shoot, which lasted for eight days, \u201cwas really draining for everybody\u201d and left him \u201ctired\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite this, Pierce recalled that producers attempted to get the child stars to work overtime, which is not legally permitted. <\/p>\n

\u201cChildren can only be on set for a number of hours,\u201d Pierce said. “The producers had approached our parents and said, \u2018Is there any way we can do a bit of overtime to get it done?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not uncommon at all in the industry because it literally saves $100,000 (\u00a373,000) plus to do that extra half hour rather than a whole day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BradleyBradley Pierce’s character turns into a monkey in ‘Jumanji’ (Sony Pictures Releasing)<\/p>\n

Williams, however, \u201ccaught wind of these conversations\u201d and \u201cpulled the director [Joe Johnston] and producers aside\u201d to tell them that wouldn\u2019t be happening. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018No, we are not doing any extra time. You\u2019re going to let everybody out now and we\u2019re going to come back next week,\u2019\u201d recalled Pierce. <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cFor all the dollars that would have cost, nobody would have stood up the way he did. In addition to being warm, generous and kind, he was also very protective.\u201d The Independent has contacted Johnston for comment.<\/p>\n

\"RobinRobin Williams in ‘Jumanji’ (Sony Pictures Releasing)<\/p>\n

Jumanji \u2013 which also starred Bonnie Hunt and Jonathan Hyde \u2013 is one of Williams\u2019s most popular films. The movie follows two children whose worlds collide with Williams\u2019s Alan Parrish, who was sucked into the magical board game as a young boy.<\/p>\n

While the film is more than 30 years old, and spawned a reboot starring Dwayne Johnson in 2017, the majority of its fans still don\u2019t know what the title means.<\/p>\n

According to Chris van Allsburg, the author who wrote the 1981 children\u2019s book that inspired the film, Jumanji is actually a Zulu word for \u201cmany effects\u201d.<\/p>\n

These \u201ceffects” refer to \u201cthe exciting consequences of the game\u201d, which includes the unleashing of wild monkeys, untamed tigers and huge spiders into the world.<\/p>\n

Williams very nearly didn\u2019t star in the film, only agreeing to sign on once the original script had been redrafted. Meanwhile, as well as Jumanji, Pierce also voiced Chip in Beauty and the Beast (1992) and appeared in 1997 film The Borrowers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-784986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}