Sarah Michelle Gellar reflects on her friendship and professional relationship with Robin Williams, emphasizing how his tragic passing prompted a profound shift in her outlook on life.
In a recent appearance on Shannen Doherty’s Let’s Be Clear podcast, 46-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar opened up about her time working alongside Robin Williams on the CBS sitcom *The Crazy Ones* from September 2013 to April 2014. She shared how she felt “very protective” of Williams during this period.
The project, where Sarah Michelle Gellar and Robin Williams portrayed a father-daughter duo, served as Williams’ last television role. Tragically, Williams died by suicide on August 11, 2014, at the age of 63. It was later revealed that he had Lewy body dementia, the second-most common form of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.
During the podcast conversation, Gellar revealed that she accepted the series role despite having a three-month-old son, Rocky James, at the time. She was drawn to the opportunity to collaborate with Williams.
“I went back to work right away because I was desperate to work with Robin,” she explained. “When that opportunity came my way, there was no way to pass it up.”
However, once on set, Gellar disclosed that she was “one of the few people that knew… that he was really struggling, that he wasn’t well.”
“I soaked up every moment I could with him,” she continued of Williams, who struggled with his mental health throughout his prolific career. “I felt that the work was the easy part for me. It was just making sure that, you know, he was okay and that they weren’t working him too hard.”
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer star stated that a “couple of people” on the show knew about Williams and were all “very protective” of him. She added that because working on a TV show is a “hard job,” she and those other people wanted to help him “without spilling secrets.”
Following Williams’ passing, Gellar recounted to Doherty, 52, how “everything just stopped.” She expressed that his death motivated her to step back from Hollywood and prioritize spending time with her children. Apart from her son Rocky, who is now 11, Gellar and her husband Freddie Prinze Jr. also have a daughter named Charlotte Grace, aged 14.
“I just said, ‘What am I doing? Like, my kids are really young. I’ve lived my whole life, I don’t want to miss this… I don’t want to be gone when Rocky takes this first step,'” Gellar recalled thinking. “That’s what made me take all those years off was Robin. Not just him, but just you know, those moments in your life stop you in your tracks.”
Doherty quickly interjected, adding, “[It] gives you a different sort of clarity. And your priorities shift.”
Prior to Gellar’s conversation with Doherty, she exclusively revealed in 2022 that following Williams’ death, she “needed that break to be the parent that [she] wanted to be.”
“I need to be here for these early formative years of my kids’ lives,” she shared at the time. “I’ve been working my entire life. When I had kids — and it was right after Robin passed away — there was just so much going on in my life and I just said, ‘I need to take a break.'”