You've Only Seen the Clean Cut of Mrs. Doubtfire

Chris Columbus confirms R-rated version, toys with releasing some scenes
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 23, 2021 11:25 AM CDT
You've Only Seen the Clean Cut of Mrs. Doubtfire
Director Chris Columbus participates in AOL's BUILD Speaker Series to discuss the film "Pixels" at AOL Studios on July 20, 2015, in New York.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Somebody start a petition—because director Chris Columbus has confirmed there is an R-rated version of Mrs. Doubtfire somewhere out there. And—cue the horror—he doesn't plan to release it. Last week, the Twitter account @factsonfilm tweeted that Robin Williams, who played a divorcee who posed as a female housekeeper to care for his kids after he lost custody, had improvised so many scenes from the 1993 family classic "that there were PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 cuts of the film." And that's mostly true, Columbus tells Entertainment Weekly. He notes he only joked about a NC-17 version in a 2015 interview with Yahoo. But there are in fact three or four versions of the film, which was released under a PG-13 rating, including an R-rated version.

Columbus says he had a deal with Williams in which the late actor would do up to three scripted takes. "And then he would say, 'Then let me play.'" Columbus notes as many as 20 takes would follow with Williams improvising. "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," Columbus adds. The director has no plans to release another version of Mrs. Doubtfire for fear of ruining the film's legacy, per CNN. But "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," Columbus tells EW. "I think that would be the best approach." Both Williams and Columbus had signed on to a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel when Williams died in 2014, per Us Weekly. (More movies stories.)

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