Whoopi Goldberg is remembering her close friendships with late actors Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve.
Reeve’s adult children Matthew, Alexandra and Will joined Goldberg, 68, and her cohosts on the Thursday, September 19, episode of The View to promote a new documentary about the Superman star’s life before and after a 1995 horse-riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.
The View cohost Sunny Hostin pointed out that Goldberg was interviewed for the doc, titled Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, and appeared in a film that Reeve directed about the AIDS crisis.
“Well, I was shocked that he called me,” Goldberg recalled her memories of being cast in 1997’s In the Gloaming. “I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I want you.’ I was like, ‘OK.’ He said, ‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want to know. Whatever you want.’”
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Goldberg went on to pay tribute to both Reeve and Williams, who was a close friend of Reeve’s and also features in the documentary.
“I was lucky to have Robin and Christopher in my life,” she said. “To me, those two men were rocks, they were rocks for me. I didn’t see them all the time but they were never far from my soul.”
“They taught us how to actually figure out how to move forward [amid hardship],” she added. “I had the greatest time. I was lucky.”
Reeve died in October 2004 from heart failure at the age of 52. Williams died by suicide in August 2014 after years of battling depression and anxiety and being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. An autopsy showed that Williams had the rare disease Lewy body dementia.
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Reeve’s son, Will, 32, who is now a correspondent for ABC News, recently told People that Williams was one of the first people to visit his father in hospital following his 1995 accident. The Superman and Jumanji actors met in the 1970s when they studied theater at Juilliard together, Will said.
“Robin was dad’s best friend, and you show up for your friends,” said Will. “Our dad and Robin had a singular bond. They had a friendship that someone should make a movie about, but what shone through in that was just their love and respect for each other, and that never wavered.”
