EXCLUSIVE: Zelda Williams shares the 'handy' advice father Robin Williams passed down to her
After years of acting in minor parts and working behind the scenes, Zelda Williams has finally landed her first leading role -- in Freeform's new campy thriller, Dead of Summer.
ET caught up with the 26-year-old actress at the premiere of her new show, where she opened up about growing up in the industry, and revealed the "handy" piece of advice her father, Robin Williams, passed down to her.
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"He always said, 'Don't wear your mic pack to the bathroom,'" she told ET's Katie Krause on the red carpet. "'Don't do that, ever. If you're mic'd don't go anywhere or say anything that you don't want other people to hear because there's probably, like, 30 people with headsets on listening.'"
While Williams has had the opportunity to put that advice into practice throughout the years -- acting opposite her father in 2004's House of D, scoring a two-episode arc on Teen Wolf, and performing in short films and voice-over work in between -- her part in Dead of Summer is her first leading role. But for Williams, it's perfect timing.
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"I'm grateful that it took such a long time for me to have someone decide to choose me for something like this," she said. "I got to grow up, and I got to find myself before having to find a character that's so different from myself, and that's really helpful. It helps keep me certainly grounded more into reality. I think you can lose it otherwise."
Williams stars as Drew in the series, and told us all about her character -- as much as she could, anyway.
"It's crazy! I have to keep so many secrets!" Williams revealed. The show -- set in the summer of 1989 at Camp Stillwater -- follows Drew and other counselors as they discover the camp is host to deadly and mysterious secrets. "Drew is a big mystery. It's a really fascinating role...I'm keeping secrets that even my other castmates aren't forced to keep because my character is a secret in and of itself," she said.
Dead of Summer premieres Tuesday, June 28 at 9 p.m. on Freeform.
Check out more amazing quotes from Robin Williams in the gallery below:
While Williams is moving onward and upward in her first leading role, the actress recently told ET that she's still not able to watch her father's old movies. See what she had to say about her dad's legacy and how she's moving on from the loss in the video below.
