Robin Williams on His Character in The Night Listener: Williams is playing a character based on his good friend Armistead Maupin. “Yeah, but it's not Armistead, even he would say that,” explained Williams. “If you give a percentage it's only like 20%. It's only Armistead in the sense that there's somewhat of a Southern accent. When you hear Armistead speak he's a very elegant man, a very articulate man and in San Francisco he's like the mayor, the second mayor. We have our regular mayor and then we have Armistead.
It's like the idea of having him and that kind of persona of Armistead and then being this other guy. But this is based on incidents in Armistead's life. He talked about Terry [Anderson], and I've known him and Terry for years. They're like friends and family to me. I've known them for a long time. So I wasn't doing an impression of Armistead, but just taking a little bit of him and using that as a kind of base.”
Robin Williams’ Familiarity with the Story Prior to Filming: “I knew and I didn't know. At a certain point you don't want to know too much because it'll creep you out and you won't be able to work that well. I mean, she exists and there are other people who have done it, obviously. There's J.T. Leroy and other scams that have been perpetuated for a while. Sometimes it's against celebrities and other times it's against regular people. There was a thing in the paper the other day about a guy who scammed $70,000 from his friends by claiming that he had pancreatic cancer. What she did here is Munchausen's by Ventriloquism – create a persona. People engage in that and think, 'Oh, this child…' People have a desire to help. It's the child factor or the puppy factor.”
The Real Woman Who Duped So Many: Does Williams have compassion for the woman who really did this to Armistead Maupin? “I do and I don't,” answered Williams, “because you also have kind of this compassion and say that there is something motivating that, aside from the fact that she can. There is something disturbing her.
If you've tracked her history like Armistead has, she went on to marry some man and that turned out to be a car wreck. And then the fact that she contacted us – Toni [Collette] got a letter during the filming of this. Armistead said that it was most likely from her. There is that weird kind of stalker mentality combined with the ability, she does have that ability, she convinced these people and she used it. You have to say wow to that. What did she do with it? She scammed people. She had them going and there's a certain amount of skill in that, as with all great sociopaths who do that.”
Williams says he’s never been duped like this but knows people who've had experiences similar to this one. “I've helped a lot of Make A Wish kids, but I've never one call from the Bahamas going, 'I'm 30. Thanks for the money for the machine, the dialysis machine. I'm riding it.' I've never been duped like that, but I have met other people who have been. There was also a woman going around here who was with a lot of comics, a coincidence, who claimed that she had a son who was severely handicapped, or suffering from something, and engaged them, I think, for money and for companionship. They were going with it and had never met the kid, or maybe at one point she did bring the kid, but it turned out later that it wasn't even her kid. She borrowed some kid. So it is out there. As we've seen with J.T. Leroy and stuff, there are books where people are like, 'Oh, this book is so devastatingly sad and real' and it turns out that it's a couple in San Francisco. And Oprah is going, 'Don't you ever offend the Queen of show business.'”
What causes this sort of behavior? Williams offered, “I think that it's a desire to live other people's lives, to observe other people's lives. When you look at most of these magazines, they're all about looking at other people living. And now with reality series you're literally watching other people watching other people. At a certain point it's like going, 'We're all watching each other. That's so cool.' Then with the cell phones you're watching other people watching you on the phone. It's also the idea that their life is better than yours. 'Screw them.' Or, 'I want to live that life.' Or, 'I can somehow hook onto your life.' What makes it interesting here is that you and I are talking here directly and not text messaging and communicating. There is a culture built around that and it's growing.”
Page 2: Toni Collette, Comedy, and The Joker Rumors
