Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus confirmed an R-rated version of the movie does exist. The 1993 comedy classic stars Robin Williams as Daniel Hillard, a talented voice actor who undergoes a painful divorce that results in his wife Miranda (Sally Field) being granted sole custody of their three children. He creates a British nanny alter ego, Mrs. Doubtfire, in an effort to become Miranda’s housekeeper and spend time in disguise with his children. Though it received mixed reviews upon release, Mrs. Doubtfire became one of the highest-grossing movies of the ’90s and is now considered one of Williams’s finest comedic showcases.
The movie’s legacy is almost entirely defined by Williams’s electric performance, which, like Aladdin and his other great work, involved tons of improvised jokes. His now iconic style of riffing for the camera resulted in hours of footage and quips, some possibly more inappropriate than others, being unfortunately left on the cutting room floor. The prospect of this edgier cut of the movie came to light on March 18 when a now viral tweet mentioned the existence of not just an R-rated version but an NC-17 version as well. Now, Chris Columbus has spoken up to finally address those scintillating rumors.
Although no NC-17 version of Mrs. Doubtfire exists, the director confirmed to Entertainment Weekly there are three different cuts of the film, including an R-rated one. Because Williams would do as many as 22 additional unscripted takes in every scene, the humor would vacillate wildly in terms of age appropriateness, with only the PG-13 jokes making it into Mrs. Doubtfire‘s theatrical release. However, Columbus expressed interest in potentially making a documentary that incorporates much of Williams’s hilarious unseen material. Here’s what he had to say about the Mrs. Doubtfire cut:
“The reality is that there was a deal between Robin and myself, which was, he’ll do one or two, three scripted takes. And then he would say, ‘Then let me play.’ And we would basically go on anywhere between 15 to 22 takes, I think 22 being the most I remember… 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. I only [previously] used the phrase NC-17 as a joke. There could be no NC-17 version of the movie.”
Along with Home Alone just a few years earlier, Mrs. Doubtfire is largely responsible for platforming Columbus as a mainstream Hollywood hitmaker. His work has encompassed everything from big-budget dramas to franchise work, including Bicentennial Man, the first two Harry Potter movies, and last year’s The Christmas Chronicles 2. His producing work is arguably more prolific, with more than 20 past credits and the upcoming Gremlins 3 to his name.
It’s certainly a strange coincidence that Columbus’s talks of an R-rated Mrs. Doubtfire cut came right on the heels of the Snyder Cut’s release. Fans have long been infatuated with the mythology surrounding unseen director’s cuts, with Blade Runner and its seven different versions largely responsible for shaping that modern mythology. While it’s currently unclear whether or not fans will see this adult-oriented version of Mrs. Doubtfire, the thrill of possibly willing a version of a movie into existence the way fans did with the Snyder Cut should be enough to keep Williams diehards invested over the long term.
