This week marked the 25th anniversary of the release of the family adventure movie Jumanji, and though Sony Pictures has taken the series and turned it into a blockbuster franchise, it had smaller and humble beginnings back in 1995. Based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg and starring Robin Williams, the film quickly found an audience and brought in $262.8 million at the box office off a $65 million budget. With two and a half decades since its release, one of the stars for the film is here to reminisce on his time working with the late comedian on the movie.
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Speaking with CBC’s q with Tom Power Bradley Pierce, who played Peter Shepherd opposite WIlliams, Bonnie Hunt, David Alan Grier, and fellow child actor Kirsten Dunst, opened up about his time on the set of the Joe Johnston movie. In the interview he spoke about how much his co-stars inspired him and helped him grow, but especially Williams. Pierce offered stories about days filming the “monsoon” sequence in the movie and how Williams stood up for he and Dunst as young actors, plus other ways that he went out of his way to make him comfortable on set.
“Getting to work with Robin was so special because he’s just such a talented and amazing performer and person,” Pierce said. “He inspired everyone around him. He was able to take what should have been, or at least could have been, an incredibly stressful work environment with all the challenges of creating a heavy special effects movie with all of the moving parts and all of the cast and crew, and he really made it fun and easy, even playful, most of the time. We always got in a good take before they would let him play, and he would just kind of go crazy for a take or two, it was just so memorable.”
Pierce also spoke about the days of the shoot where he was forced to wear monkey make-up, fans may recall that Peter cheats during the game and is forced into becoming a human-monkey hybrid as punishment. Due to the time it would take to get him ready, Pierce would need to arrive on set early, and sometimes he would find Williams there too, arriving hours ahead of his schedule.
“He would tell stories about some of his experiences with the Mrs. Doubtfire make-up. That was just the kind of guy he was, he wanted all of the people around him to be happy and comfortable. It meant a lot to me because for a twelve or thirteen year old boy, sitting in a make-up chair for three hours, first thing in the morning, this guy who is an amazing professional that everybody admires, understands what sitting in the make-up chair two hours before anybody else is on set really feels like. he was just hanging out, trying to make me feel better.”
As fans might recall, the ending of 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level brought things back into the real world, seemingly setting up a new movie that would be closer in tone to the 1995 original. There was even a scene with Bebe Neuwirth returning as Nora Shepherd from the first film. No firm plans have been announced for this next film, and Pierce made no indication if he will be a part of it, but it’s hard to imagine a world where that conversation doesn’t happen at the studio level.
