Matt Damon Hopes For Robin Williams Statue In Boston’s Public Garden
Matt Damon is advocating for a bronze statue of the late Robin Williams to be placed in Boston’s Public Garden. In a recent interview with journalist Jake Hamilton on YouTube, Matt, 53, shared his excitement about the proposal while discussing his new movie, The Instigators, with co-star Casey Affleck, 48.
Matt recently learned about an artist’s pitch to honor Robin, who passed away at 63 in August 2014, with a statue. “I don’t know if it will happen, but I really hope it does,” he said.
“Someone proposed to us an artist to do a bronze statue of Robin and permanently put it there, and the idea being that if you feel alone you can go sit next to him, which I think is the coolest idea,” he added.
The proposed statue would be placed next to a bench in the park where Matt and Robin filmed a memorable scene from the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. This film not only earned Williams an Academy Award for his role as psychologist Sean Maguire but also launched the careers of Matt and Ben Affleck, who won an Oscar for the screenplay.
Reflecting on the project, Matt expressed his enthusiasm, saying, “It would be the most beautiful installation and such a tribute to that guy, who I think would have loved that. Anyway, I just heard about this like a month ago. I really hope it comes to pass, I hope they let this artist do it because it would be pretty cool.”
Fans of Good Will Hunting and Robin turned the unmarked bench from the film into a makeshift memorial after his death in 2014. A petition to create a bronze statue of Robin at that site was initiated that year and remains active today. It’s unclear if this is the same proposal Matt mentioned.
Matt also reminisced about working with Robin, saying, “Robin was off-book in pre-production, which was nuts, because that monologue was like two pages long, and I don’t say anything in that scene — just at the very top — and then he goes into that thing.”
“I remember rehearsing it with him and I was off book because we wrote it, but he just put his script down. . . and Ben and I kind of looked at each other like, ‘This is going to be amazing,'” he added.
