The director, who made The Fisher King in 1991 with Robin Williams in the lead role, said that seeing the film in the wake of the actor’s suicide cast it in a new light

The film director and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam has said that The Fisher King, the 1991 film he made with Robin Williams, has been cast in a completely new light in the wake of the actor’s suicide.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Gilliam said he rewatched the film ahead of a Blu-ray release by Criterion; the sequences in which Williams’ character is pursued by the Red Knight, a tormentor from his own imagination, were given an eerie significance. “I didn’t have to push him because he believed that was true. He knew the darker side and what it means to have demons,” Gilliam said, adding that Williams helped to turn the scenes from “cutesy” on the page to something much darker.

Gilliam added that seeing the film was “exhilarating because there was Robin — alive and well... It is the whole breadth of Robin, which no other part I think out there does. From the hysterically funny to the manic to the utterly sweet to the sensitive and tormented, it’s all there.”

He also said that “the worldwide reaction [to Williams’ death] was amazing. Hollywood had probably become very cynical that his stuff wasn’t working, but the world loved him and that was because he was so utterly unique.”

The pair worked together not just on The Fisher King, but also on Gilliam’s film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. One of Williams’ final films will be Absolutely Anything, a zany sci-fi comedy starring the Monty Python team alongside Simon Pegg, with Williams voicing a dog.



