10. His Mork And Mindy Appearances Were Mostly Unscripted
Williams' breakout role was in a spin-off series as bonkers as the man himself. The characters of Mork & Mindy originated on Happy Days which, for the most part, was a fairly straight baby boomer sitcom about crazy kids living in an idealised version of fifties America. Lots of jukeboxes and leather jackets. Like that Weezer video! Then, for some reason, an alien from the planet Ork landed and moved in with human roommate Mindy and then they went off to have fun on their own. Williams impressed producer Garry Marshall as soon as he walked into the audition for extraterrestrial Mork, taking Marshall's invitation to "have a seat" by grabbing a chair and standing on his head. The TV veteran later said Williams was cast because he was the only "real alien" to audition. During the making of the show Williams delved into his experience with stand up comedy and improvisation, rarely sticking to the script and pretty much making up all of his own dialogue. People loved it, though, so it got to the point that the writers deliberately left gaps in the scripts, leaving "Mork can go off here" in the places they assumed he'd be going off on one. A similar fate befell his part as Genie in Aladdin, where he ad-libbed sixteen hours of material, to the point that the film's script was turned down for a Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nomination. Oops.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
