Robin Williams ‘Sabotaged’ Other Comedians at the Improv

When Bridesmaids director Paul Feig was an up-and-coming stand-up comic, getting a chance — any chance — to perform at the Improv was a big deal. But some nights were easier to get on stage than others. “I got sabotaged by Robin Williams a couple of times when I finally got to be a performer at The Improv,” he said. 

Sabotaged by Robin Williams? What was he doing, throwing spitballs during Feig’s set? Nothing that nefarious, Feig told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the Dinner’s on Me podcast. As a comedian early in his career, Feig rarely got stage time until later in the evening. “I remember once it was my time to get up, and there was a full audience,” he said. “I was so excited, and they come up like, ‘Oh, Robin just wants to get up and do a quick set first.’”

Uh-oh. “Robin Williams” and “quick set” aren’t two words comics often heard in the same sentence. Instead of working out material for a few minutes, Williams “did an hour,” Feig said. “He finished and everybody left, except for one woman who was waiting for her husband to come back from the bathroom.”

While generally revered by his fellow comics, Williams’ comedy reputation had a few dings in it as well. He famously borrowed jokes, and according to The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club that Revolutionized Stand-Up, he monopolized stage time as well.  

At the New York Improv, for example, there was a fire door right next to the stage. “The running joke was that there’d sometimes be a knock at the door during the middle of the show,” remembered Joe Piscopo. “Whenever it happened, I’d open it, and it would usually be Robin and I’d hand him the microphone.”

“Whenever Robin walked into the room, whoever was onstage at the time knew they might as well get off,” says Paula Poundstone. “I don’t think his attitude was ever, ‘Get off because I’m here.’ But even so, most of us had the good sense to say, ‘Robin’s here, have a good time.’”

Williams’ manager, David Steinberg, said Williams liked to go on last because he didn’t like to bump other comics if he could help it. “There was never any 15-minute rule for Robin,” he admitted. “He would just go on and on and on without notes. Robin wrote while he was talking, and it was always a stream of consciousness.”

But Williams could be generous to other comics as well. “Once I was about to go on at the Improv in New York — literally down to the second they were getting ready to announce me — when in walked Robin,” Gilbert Gottfried once recalled. “He was still doing Mork & Mindy, and like any other club, their attitude was, ‘Get Robin onstage!’ But then he did the most incredible thing. He said, ‘I’ve got people coming to see me, but I want them to see Gilbert go on first.’”