She’s a father and children’s nanny, for God’s sake. Despite Twitter’s fervent hopes earlier this week, no, there is no cut of Mrs. Doubtfire could qualify for an NC-17 rating. After a viral tweet circulated, allegedly based on a 2015 interview with director Christopher Columbus, suggesting an unspeakably adult version of the 1993 Robin Williams comedy could be assembled from the late comedian’s improvised lines, Columbus dashed your dreams to Entertainment Weekly on Friday. “I only [previously] used the phrase NC-17 as a joke,” he confirmed. “There could be no NC-17 version of the movie.”
But, if it makes you feel any better, and it probably will, Robin Williams did reportedly crank up his salty alts way past the movie’s PG-13 ratings, once Columbus had captured the scripted takes he needed to get past the Motion Picture Association of America without any spontaneous fainting or vomiting.
“The reality is that there was a deal between Robin and myself, which was, he’ll do one or two, three scripted takes. And then he would say, ‘Then let me play.’ And we would basically go on anywhere between 15 to 22 takes, I think 22 being the most I remember,” Columbus recalls. “He would sometimes go into territory that wouldn’t be appropriate for a PG-13 movie, but certainly appropriate and hilariously funny for an R-rated film.”
“I would be open to maybe doing a documentary about the making of the film, and enabling people to see certain scenes re-edited in an R-rated version,” the director says. “The problem is, I don’t recall most of it. I only know what’s in the movie at this point because it’s been a long time. But I do remember it was outrageously funny material.”
Aaaaaaand if that’s enough to get you committed to a Snyder Cut–style campaign to see that filthy version of Mrs. Doubtfire, then Godspeed, and hopefully we’ll see you over on HBO Max some day soon.
