Robin William’s daughter, Zelda, coincidentally got the genie from Aladdin on the Disney character Instagram filter and it brought a huge, viral-worthy smile to her face.
As you probably already know, the late Robin Williams played the voice of the genie in the animated Disney classic, “Aladdin”.
It was definitely one of his most iconic characters!
So, when his daughter, Zelda Williams, was testing out the new ‘Which Disney Character Are You?’ filter on Instagram, six years after the death of her father, it was a very heartwarming surprise when she got the Genie.
It instantly brought a smile to her face.
Since her father’s passing, Zelda has faced all kinds of adversity and backlash. At one point, she actually had to take herself off of social media to avoid harassment.
Trolls were sending her altered images of her father with bruises around his neck, and hateful messages blaming her for his death.
“Please report @PimpStory @MrGoosebuster. I’m shaking. I can’t. Please. Twitter requires a link and I won’t open it. Don’t either. Please,” she wrote at the time in a since-deleted tweet .
It wasn’t long after that that she swore off social media altogether.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve risen above. Deleting this from my devices for a good long time, maybe forever. Time will tell. Goodbye,” she wrote.
After a much needed break from social media, Zelda eventually returned. She even gave her first interview since Robin’s death, on NBC
“You know, it’s taking it one step at a time. The world keeps spinning,” she said .
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“A lot of people feel his absence.”
She also explained that she hasn’t bothered to think much about why her dad chose to end his life.
“I don’t think there’s a point,” she said. “It’s not important to ask.”
She revealed that she planned on getting a tattoo of a hummingbird to pay tribute to her father.
“Hummingbirds are fun and flighty and strange. It’s hard to keep them in one place and Dad was a bit like that,” she explained .
In 2016 she opened up on the “Today Show” about the unusual ways she grieved her loss.
“I just keep going, ‘OK, well today I’m going to wake up and love what I do. And then tomorrow I’m going to wake up and be happy and love what I do. And then the next day,'” she said .
“It was very funny because for a while no one would let me do anything,” she said. “I think there’s that reaction of like, ‘Oh [expletive], are you OK?'”
“And then even if you are OK, they’re like ‘Well, what’s wrong?’ And so for a while, I was just kind of left to my own devices.”
During her mourning period, she revealed that she stayed indoors and worked on her own scripts.
While she was proud of the work she managed to produce, she admitted that she “didn’t see daylight for a while.”
Anyway, last week, a six-second video of Zelda went viral for the best possible reason.
She tried out the “Which Disney Character Are You?” filter on Instagram, and of the dozen characters she could have gotten, she got one of the characters her dad played the voice of.
Seriously, what are the chances?! This must have been fate.
Fans loved it .
The look on her face is everything .
Within just a few days, the video reached 1.8 million views!
Countless fans chimed in, calling it a sign from her dad.
And TONS of crying gifs — because let’s be serious, there’s no way you watched that clip and didn’t get a little weepy-eyed.
I really wasn’t planning on crying today. But here I am.
I’m sure on some small level, it meant a lot to Zelda that that was the character the filter randomly selected for her.
Fyi, this is going to be me for the rest of the day after watching that video.
I hope you enjoyed today’s daily dose of the warm and fuzzies!