In an eerie foreshadow of his hanging death Monday, a subdued Robin Williams spoke about suicidal thoughts during a 2010 interview.
The comedian, known for being frank about his vices, often using his struggles with drugs and alcohol as bits for his stand-up routines, sat down with Marc Maron, who had just started his twice-weekly podcast “WTF with Marc Maron” to talk in depth about his dark side and hitting the bottle.
Maron reposted the hour-long 2010 interview on his blog after Williams’ death, telling his viewers he wanted people to hear it again because “it changed many people’s perceptions of Robin Williams.”
“I want to tell you right out of the gate that it’s delicate in that he does discuss his battle with drugs and alcohol,” Maron said, his voice cracking throughout the five-minute introduction. “He talks about his depression. He talks about it in a way that most people have never heard him talk about anything.”
In the last 10 minutes of their chat, Maron asked Williams, “How are you doing?” The two discussed Williams “emotional” time after his heart surgery.
Williams admitted that at one point while he was still drinking, he thought, “Oh f— life.”
In the style only Williams was capable of, he went on to act out a five-minute chat between himself and his “conscience,” playing out a dark day in his life when he was sitting naked in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
His conscience asked him how he could be thinking of suicide when he had a “good life” including two houses and a girlfriend.
“Let’s put the suicide over here on the discussable. Let’s put it over here in the discussion area. We’ll talk about it,” Williams said as his conscience, his voice hushed throughout.
“First of all, you don’t have the balls to do it.”
He went on to discuss the ways he would carry it out, with his conscience asking, “Have you thought about buying a gun? What are you going to do? Have you thought about cutting your wrists with a Waterpik.”
To which Williams responded to his conscience, “Maybe.”
Authorities said Williams tried to slash his wrists with a pen knife before opting to use a belt affixed to a closet door in his bedroom.
His conscience quickly fired back, “Well that’s erosion. Can I put this over here in the ‘what the f— category?’”
When he finished, Maron said, “Thank you. That was wonderful. It was a nice interval – discussion of death.”
“Thank you, it was very freeing,” Williams responded.