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Billy Connolly on Robin Williams' death: He called to say goodbye

“During the call he kept telling me he loved me. I said ‘I know.' But he kept repeating it saying ‘do you really know I love you.' I was thinking what the [expletive] is he on about?"

By Veronica Linares
Robin Williams. UPI/Rune Hellestad
1 of 3 | Robin Williams. UPI/Rune Hellestad | License Photo

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Scottish actor Billy Connolly revealed during a recent interview that he felt late actor Robin Williams "was saying goodbye" during the last phone conversation they had before he died.

Connolly and Williams had been friends since meeting on a Canadian talk show about 30 years ago. The comedian told British newspaper The Mirror he had been talking to the Mrs. Doubtfire star in the weeks before his death to give him advice on how to handle the lack of facial expression that comes with Parkinson's disease.

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"He phoned me a week later, just days before it happened, and he said 'it's brilliant it's working,'" Connolly recounted. "During the call he kept telling me he loved me. I said 'I know.' But he kept repeating it saying 'do you really know I love you.' I was thinking what the [expletive] is he on about?

"After his death I thought 'oh my God he was saying goodbye,'" he added.

GALLERY: Remembering Robin Williams

Williams' widow Susan Schneider revealed days after the actor's death that he had been battling depression and the early stages of Parkinson's disease before dying of suicide due to asphyxia in August.

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Connolly said he remembers receiving a phone call from an unknown number in California on the night of Williams' death, but that "he couldn't have" been the one calling.

"My phone went in the middle of the night and I just left it," he explained. "The phone was on the other side of the bedroom and I thought [expletive] that, it's four in the morning. When I got up it was a Californian number. But he didn't have my Maltese number... so it couldn't have been him. It couldn't have."

Connolly is dealing with his fair share of medical problems himself after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, deafness and prostate cancer.

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