Jumanji child star Bradley Pierce says Robin Williams stood up for him on set

Jumanji child star Bradley Pierce has told how his co-star Robin Williams defended him and Kirsten Dunst while filming the 1995 fantasy adventure film.

Bradley, 38, who played Peter Shepherd in the blockbuster, claimed that producers asked for him to work overtime but Robin stepped in and refused.

The actor explained he was struggling to breathe in his vast amount of make-up he was wearing to make him look like a monkey and he found the shoot ‘draining’.

Speaking about the film ahead of its 25th anniversary on CBCListen, he discussed a particular scene where a monsoon swept the house and he struggled to breathe with the water getting stuck in his make-up.

‘I couldn’t breathe through my nose,’ he said, adding that the shoot was really ‘draining for everybody’ and left him and co-star Kirsten ‘tired’.

He said that producers had wanted them to work overtime, despite children only being permitted to legally work a certain amount of hours, in order to cut costs. 

Bradley said: ‘Children can only be on set for a number of hours. The producers had approached our parents and said, “Is there any way we can do a bit of overtime to get it done”.

It is reportedly not uncommon for producers to ask to shoot overtime because it can save up to $100k (£73k) to film an extra half hour as opposed to another day. 

‘That’s not uncommon at all in the industry because it literally saves $100,000 (£73,000) plus to do that extra half hour rather than a whole day.’

He went on to reveal how Robin noticed the chat and pulled the film’s director aside to explain that nobody would be working overtime.  

Bradley recalled: ‘He said, “No, we are not doing any extra time. You’re going to let everybody out now and we’re going to come back next week.” For 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.’

Robin Williams died in 2014 aged 63 after taking his own life. 

The Hollywood star had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, something he had kept secret, but an autopsy performed after his death on August 11, 2014, revealed he had been misdiagnosed and had instead been suffering from Lewy body dementia. 

In a trailer for a documentary about his life, Robin’s Wish, Dr Bruce Miller, the director of the Memory and Aging Center at University of California, San Francisco, and a distinguished professor of neurology, is heard explaining: ‘Lewy body dementia is a devastating illness. It increases anxiety, self-doubt, causes delusions.’

Filmmaker Shawn Levy, who directed Williams in his final film Night At The Museum: Secret of The Tomb, shared that it had been ‘clear to all of us on that set that something was going on with Robin.’

He said: ‘I remember him saying to me, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not me any more.