Stuart Dunmeyer

### Goals

Marry Miranda and send her children to a boarding school to get rid of them (failed).

### Type of Villain

Opportunistic Golddigger

**Stuart Dunmeyer** was intended to be the main antagonist in an early draft of the 1993 film *Mrs. Doubtfire*. Although he is a kind and good-hearted person in the finished product, the film's original script originally had him as a manipulative jerk who wished to marry Miranda Hillard and get rid of her children by sending them to a boarding school.

He was portrayed by Pierce Brosnan in the final project.

## Biography

### *Mrs. Doubtfire*

Stuart Dunmeyer is introduced as a fellow worker to Miranda Hillard, the ex-wife of Daniel Hillard, the protagonist of the film. It's mentioned that Stuart was an early love interest of Miranda back when she was younger until she met Daniel, whom she recently divorced because of his immaturity. Shortly after divorcing Daniel, Miranda starts to date Stuart, who then meets her kids, with whom he succeeds in getting along with despite that Lydia, Chris and Natalie still love their father.

In secret, Daniel starts disguising himself as an Scottish-accented nanny called Mrs. Doubtfire to spend time with his kids and eventually becomes aware of Miranda's relationship with Stuart. Knowing that Stuart considers him a loser, Daniel discretly annoys Stuart behind his back, by flipping him off after he turns around, breaking his Mercedes-Benz's logo and even throwing a fruit at him after spending much of his money on drinks at a pool club.

At the film's climax, for Miranda's birthday, they all go to a restaurant where Daniel has a meeting with his new boss, so he poses as both Mrs. Doubtfire and himself at times. However, Daniel opts to season Stu's order of jambalaya with powdered cayenne pepper to get back at him and causes him to choke. Feeling guilty, Daniel administers the Heimlich maneuver on Stuart and saves him yet exposes himself on the process. As a result, Miranda gets more angrier at him and gets full custody of her children, but eventually realizes her mistake and becomes more amicable to Daniel and request joint custody, allowing Daniel to see his children more often. It's unknown what happens with Stuart afterwards, but it's likely that Miranda continued to date him and he's still on good terms with the children and maybe with Daniel as well despite his previous opinion about him.

### Original script

In the original script for the film, however, Stuart Dunmeyer was everything but kind and good-hearted. Instead, Stuart was a manipulative jerk who wished to marry Miranda and wanted to get rid of Lydia, Chris and Natalie, planning to enlist them to a boarding school to do so. In the end, Stuart would have been exposed and Miranda would have called off her engagement with him, foiling his plans to marry her. When the character was rewritten to be just like he is in the finished film, the only part originally written for this villainous characterization that was retained in the film was Stuart's line about Daniel being a loser at the pool club.

It's presumed that in this version, Miranda would have ultimately forgiven Daniel because of his past actions and remarry him after realizing how Stuart really was, just like Daniel wished, or stay divorced of him but in amicable terms like in the finished film. The original ending had Daniel and Miranda staying divorced, but then it was rewritten to have them reconcile and remarry. However, Robin Williams, Sally Field and director Chris Columbus, all divorcees, ultimately concluded that by using this ending, they were going to give false hope to children of divorced couples that their parents would eventually reconcile, so they went back and used the original ending.

## Trivia

* Tim Allen was originally offered to play Stuart Dunmeyer before Pierce Brosnan's casting, but Allen turned down the offer so he could appear in *Home Improvement*. It's unknown whether Allen turned down the role back when Stuart was written as a villain or not.
* It's unknown how Stuart was planning to enlist Natalie to a boarding school, as the minimum age to enlist a child into one is from nine to twelve and Natalie is around five or six years old in the finished film (estimating her age with that of her actress Mara Wilson's), so she would be too young to attend a boarding school.