Robin Williams Didn’t Recognize His Friends In the Final Days of His Life
In Vice's 'Dark Side of Comedy,' friends of the late comedian knew something was wrong prior to his d*ath in 2014
In the days before his tragic death, Robin Williams was a shadow of his once-vibrant self.
Prior to Williams’ death by suicide in August 2014, friends of the late actor and comic began noticing things were wrong, they revealed in the latest episode of VICE TV’s Dark Side of Comedy.
“The last time I saw Robin Williams, I hadn’t seen him for a few months, and he was thin and he didn’t recognize my wife,” comedian and friend Steven Pearl said. “He hardly said a word. It took him a second to recognize me. I go, ‘Whoa, something’s wrong here.’ I didn’t know what. Nobody would really tell me. And then I never saw him again after that.”
Rick Overton, a comic and friend of Williams, said things started becoming worrisome on the phone, as well.
“The exchanges in text were becoming more abbreviated,” he said. “Shorter sentences. All good, all lovely. It was just everything was shortening. I knew there was a change.”
Despite Overton’s observations, he heard “murmurings and things that there was a struggle going on,” he continued. “But no one knew all the details.”
Williams’ best friend of 42 years, actor Stanley Wilson, noticed something similar.
“Occasionally he would repeat things in a phone call that he had said,” he noted. “That was really unusual.”
Gina Hecht, who co-starred with Williams on Mork & Mindy, became aware of Williams’ change in demeanor after she and her husband watched him on Broadway in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo years before his death in 2011.
“We saw him afterwards, and it was so nice to see him,” Hecht said. “We chatted for a bit. When we left the theater, Brian, my husband, said, ‘Something is off.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘That sparkle in his eye is gone.’ I thought, ‘No, no, no.’ But he was right. That sparkle had faded.”
The play would mark Williams’ final appearance on Broadway.
After his death, an autopsy revealed Williams, then 63, had been suffering from diffuse Lewy body dementia (LBD), which leads to a decline in reasoning, thinking and independent function.
