Opinion
It’s been nine years since the legendary comedic star Robin Williams tragically committed suicide at the age of 63, but he is still missed by millions of fans to this day. Now, his daughter Zelda, 34, is speaking out to recall what it was like to spend the holidays with her father.
Zelda’s Holiday Memories With Robin
“Dad’s job made it pretty hard to keep anything like a yearly tradition really, aside from Thanksgiving or days when sets would shut down,” Zelda told People Magazine earlier this month. “So we didn’t really have much in the way of that, but cooking together was a big part of our family. We would eat together every Tuesday, however many family members were in town.”
“My brothers and my dad were not good cooks,” she added. “But my mom and I would take part, and it was a big part of our family.”
Robin’s Family History
Closer Weekly reported that Zelda was born in 1989 to Robin and his second wife Marsha Garces Williams, and she has a younger brother Cody who was born in 1991. Robin was also the father of Zak Williams, who was born in 1983 to the comedian and his first wife Valerie Velardi.
“Being together was the important thing, because otherwise, especially with people scattered to the wind with work, it became even more special to do that,” Zelda explained.
Nearly a decade after their father’s suicide, the Williams children still try to see one another over the holidays.
“Christmas is not a really big deal in my family,” Zelda said. “We usually use it to see each other and then just travel.”
Zelda Slams AI
This comes two months after Zelda took to her Instagram Story to say that she finds it “personally disturbing” that artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to recreate her father’s iconic voice.
“I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want want to train these [AI] models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad,” she said back in October, according to Daily Mail. “I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings.”
This was in response to members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) launching a strike back in May, partly to seek protection from AI. The strike has since been resolved.
“This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real,” Zelda continued. “Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance.”
“These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for,” she added.
Full Story: Robin Williams’ Daughter Blasts AI Attempts To Recreate Her Father – ‘I Find It Personally Disturbing’
Robin Williams’ suicide continues to be a reminder that you never really know what someone is going through behind the scenes. All these years after his death, we can only hope that Zelda and the rest of his family were able to have a merry Christmas.
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