Bradley Pierce says Robin Williams stepped in on the set of Jumanji to stop producers from pushing child actors into overtime. Pierce said Williams pulled the director and producers aside and told them not to add extra time, sending the young cast home and bringing them back the following week instead.
The recollection is resurfacing now because it comes as the film’s cast and one of its most famous stars are being remembered again, including what would have been Williams’s 75th birthday this week. Pierce, who played one of the children alongside Kirsten Dunst, said he was 13 years old during the sequence he described and that the shoot was exhausting from the start.
He said the scene took place during the monsoon sequence, when water and heavy makeup made it hard for him to breathe through his nose. The work stretched across eight days, and Pierce said it was really draining for everybody. When producers approached the parents of the child stars and asked whether there was any way to do overtime to finish the scene, the request was framed as a money-saving move that could avoid the cost of an extra day.
That was the point at which Williams intervened. Pierce said he heard the conversation and shut it down, telling the production, “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.” Pierce later said the actor was warm, generous, kind and protective, adding that no one else would have stood up in the same way when so much money was on the line. Children can only be on set for a limited number of hours, and that is why the overtime request could not simply be granted.
More than 30 years after Jumanji first reached theaters, the story lands as a specific example of the way Williams was remembered by people who worked with him: not just as a performer, but as someone willing to use his own standing to protect children around him. The production details after the cast was sent home are not spelled out, but Pierce’s account makes the outcome plain enough. The scene waited.
