This article will discuss the topic of suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis or may try to harm themselves, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
There are very, VERY few actors who are held up in as high regard as Robin Williams. Even 12 years after his death, he’s still beloved, missed, and prominently featured online. His brand of high-spirited comedy, his love of video games, his fondness for anime, his charity work, and all the many roles he took on in film and television. There is a substantial amount of reason to point to him as being a wonderful human. The tragedy of his death gave his passing even more of an emotional impact. That resonance has translated to something of a deification, though. Unfortunately, this has caused issues with how he’s discussed today and how the public’s “relationship” with him has impacted his surviving family.
Robin Williams & His Difficult Passing
When Williams passed away in 2014, the circumstances were hard to wrap one’s head around. The initial reports of suicide were met with incredulity. How could the clown be the one so depressed that they took their own life? Things like this have happened before; we never know the pain a person’s experiencing. We truly never quite know. Then the reports started coming out that Robin was experiencing a terrible disease known as Lewy body dementia. Tied closely to Parkinson’s disease, it occurs when certain proteins known as Lewy bodies start to form in the brain’s neurons. They begin to impact the central nervous system and ultimately cause a person’s brain functions to cease working in the intended way. This can lead to mental health issues like depression and paranoia.
In the case of Robin Williams, we can never truly know what was happening in his battle with the disease. Did he take his life out of concern over the progression, or did the mental changes directly cause him to take his life? His wife, Susan Schneider Williams, put it best in a heartbreaking testimonial she wrote. “Clinically he had PD, but pathologically he had diffuse LBD. The predominant symptoms Robin had were not physical—the pathology more than backed that up. However you look at it—the presence of Lewy bodies took his life.”
It’s a difficult read but an enlightening one that she chose to share about Robin’s illness and decline. It attempts to shed a light on the disease and what it does to people. It’s also a reminder that the Robin we saw was not the Robin who existed from day to day. Perhaps more people should be aware of that.
Zelda Williams & Coping With Grief
Maybe it’s because Robin’s work was so noteworthy in people’s lives of media ingestion, but it feels like many people, especially online, feel like they know him. His daughter, Zelda Williams, has explained the emotional weight that this carries. On the day before his birthday in 2020, she shared, “It’s hard for me on regular, good days to remain the person expected to graciously accept the world’s need to share their memories of him and express their condolences for his loss. As I’ve said in the past, while I am constantly touched by all of your boundless continued love for him, some days it can feel a bit like being seen as a roadside memorial—a place, not a person—where people drive past and leave their sentiments to then go about their days comforted their love for him was witnessed.”
The thing is, your love for Robin, my love for Robin, it’s all different than hers. We loved what we saw of him and his work. That’s a much different world and type of love than that of his family. As Zelda stated in 2015, regarding memories of her dad, “They are mine and I love that. They are private and lovely and perhaps very different. Who knows?”
Most anyone who has lost a parent knows. There is almost always some kind of difference between how we perceived our own parents versus how other people perceived them. And it can be very difficult when someone who saw only a side of our loved ones is always trying to talk up how amazing that person was. That’s not to say they were a bad person or even that different from what they presented. But it’s still a different feeling than what we know to be true.
Robin Wasn’t Perfect
Robin Williams was very much human, despite the reverence society has for him. We recently reported on the wonderful notion that his working contracts stipulated that homeless people had to be hired to work on his films. There’s no proof of that, but we’d like to believe it because it fits with our perception of him. There are other inconvenient truths that we tend to gloss over. A lot of his comedy was derivative of Jonathan Winters. He didn’t outright steal from him, but Williams was often accused of joke stealing. Also, his career after 2002 was flat-out rough. The projects he was in ranged from mediocre at the very best to downright awful. It’s not often talked about, though, because that’s not how we want to remember him.
Absolutely none of that is to put Robin Williams down. It’s just a reminder that his career is open to valid criticism, just like so many other actors we hold dear. But that reverence needs to be held in check. I love the music of Bruce Springsteen, but I’m not going to pretend his work between 1987 and 2002 wasn’t rough as hell. And when he eventually passes away, I’m not going to create AI videos of him and send them off to his kids.
That’s something that Zelda Williams has had to face. She’s none too pleased about it, and who can blame her? Society needs to take a collective step back and understand that Robin Williams was an amazing and special person, but he didn’t belong to us as a public. Not only that, but we didn’t truly know him. At the very least, not enough to think that his family wants constant reminders of how great we think he is.
Remembrance Without Deification
When you’re a public figure, you’re going to end up sacrificing a bit of your privacy. That’s the nature of the beast. Part of your life becomes public discourse. At the same time, it’s easy for that public to form a parasocial relationship with that figure. The more charismatic and likeable someone is, the easier that is to do. It’s all the more reason why we need to ground ourselves sometimes. We need to understand that the people we admire are just as messed up as we are.
Understanding that can save us a lot of energy in idol worship. It also saves us from being let down when someone we look up to does something stupid. The world is a funnier and better place because Robin Williams existed in it. That’s an amazing way to remember anyone. And it’s a good way to remember Robin without taking things too far.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis or may try to harm themselves, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
