Sarah Michelle Gellar's heartbreaking confession about working with Robin Williams

As the 10th anniversary of Robin Williams' death comes up this year, Sarah Michelle Gellar has spoken about her memories of working with the esteemed comedian.

As she appeared on Shannen Doherty's podcast, Let's Be Clear, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress discussed feeling "very protective" of the comedian when they co-starred on The Crazy Ones between September 2013 and April 2014. The duo played a father and daughter in Robin's final TV role.

© Ben Gabbe

On the podcast, Sarah explained she had agreed to do the series despite having a three month old child because she was "desperate" to work with the comedian.

"I went back to work right away because I was desperate to work with Robin," she explained. "When that opportunity came my way, there was no way to pass it up."

It was on set that Sarah became "one of the few people that knew ... that he was really struggling, that he wasn't well."

She continued: "I soaked up every moment I could with him,", explaining "I felt that the work was the easy part for me. It was just making sure that, you know, he was okay and that they weren't working him too hard."

© Frederick M. Brown

The actress explained that a "couple of people" on the show knew about Robin's issues, which meant they were all "very protective" of him - especially as working on a TV show can be such a "hard job". She added she wanted to help him "without spilling secrets".

Robin died aged 63 on August 11 2014 by suicide. Later on it was discovered he had Lewy body dementia - the second-most common time of progressive dementia after Alzheimer's.

Sarah was immensely impacted by the loss of her co-star, and she revealed that after his death "everything just stopped". The star decided to step away from her career and from Hollywood for a while in order to spend time with her two children: Rocky and Charlotte Grace.

© @sarahmgellar Instagram

She explained: "I just said, 'What am I doing? Like, my kids are really young. I've lived my whole life, I don't want to miss this... I don't want to be gone when Rocky takes this first step."

"That's what made me take all those years off was Robin. Not just him, but just you know, those moments in your life stop you in your tracks."

She clarified that she "needed that break to be the parent that [she] wanted to be."