Some friendships last forever.
Bonnie Hunt is remembering her Jumanji costar and friend Robin Williams. While speaking to Entertainment Tonight at the Red One premiere in a Reel the outlet posted to Instagram on Nov. 13, Hunt, 63, reflected on her time in the beloved 1995 film and the bond she forged with Williams.
“I think about my sweet Robin all the time, and I miss him dearly,” she said. “And I’m so glad that we became friends and were in each other’s lives, always.” Williams died in August 2014.
Hunt called their time together on the set of the film a “really special time,” but even more important to her was the time they spent off the set. She remembered, “just Robin with my family, with my nieces and nephews and my mom, and knowing his mom, and knowing his brother.”
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The Red One star explained, “It was really the personal bond and the trust in each other, and then the humor. Always the humor.”
In JumanjiWilliams played Alan Parrish, who is trapped in the board game Jumanji for 26 years. Hunt plays his friend Sarah, who’s traumatized by what happened to him. Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce play siblings who find Jumanji and inadvertently bring out the characters from the game — including Alan. The movie also stars Bebe Neuwirth, David Alan Grier and Patricia Clarkson.
In an April interview with VarietyDunst, 42, also remembered Williams — and the wrap present he bought her. The Aladdin star purchased the then-13-year-old her first computer. “It was an Apple, the ones that came in all those different colors,” she said. “He was like the most generous, kind, funny person.”
In 2020, Pierce, now 42, remembered during an episode of CBCListshow Williams made sure the child actors were protected on set.
“We were filming the monsoon scene and I think it was day 7 or 8 in that rain tank,” he said. “We were all in wetsuits, but spending 8 hours in the water was really draining. It was coming to the end of the day, and children on set can only be on set for a certain number of hours. Producers approached our parents and said, ‘We’ve only got a half hour left of shooting, is there anyway we can do a little bit of overtime just to get it done?’ ”
He said that at the time, it was not an “uncommon” ask because it would have saved money on production. “Robin caught wind of these conversations happening and apparently he pulled the director and producers aside and said, ‘No we’re not doing any extra time. You’re gonna let everyone out of the pool now and we’re going to be come back next week,’ ” Pierce explained.
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He noted, “For all the dollars that would have cost, nobody else could have stood up the way he did.”
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The storyline continued when Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was released in 2017, though it didn’t feature any cast members from the first movie. Instead, it starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan. In the followup film, 2019’s Jumanji: The Next LevelNeuwirth appeared in a small cameo. Another film is set to be released in 2026, per The Hollywood Reporter.
