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Whoopi Goldberg Once Had 'Fart War' on Elevator with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, Granddaughter Says

HBO & AEG Live's u0022The Comedy Festivalu0022 - Comic Relief 2006 - Backstage
HBO & AEG Live's u0022The Comedy Festivalu0022 - Comic Relief 2006 - Backstage

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in 2006

Whoopi Goldberg and her comedian pals know how to sniff out a good laugh.

In a clip from the ABC series Claim to Fame published by Entertainment Weekly, Goldberg's granddaughter Amara Skye Dean recalled a story involving Goldberg, Billy Crystal and the late Robin Williams farting on an elevator for a silly gag — a "fart war," as she described it.

"I wasn't there, but it was my favorite story that my grandmother has told me," Dean said in the clip, "about her, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal standing in an elevator, and Robin Williams was just farting his life away. I guess they were Dutch-ovening each other, just basking in the ambiance of farts."

She added, "My grandma got her name because she likes to fart a lot. So, whoopee cushions, farts. That's how Caryn Johnson became Whoopi Goldberg."

Claim to Fame, co-hosted by Kevin Jonas and Frankie Jonas, is a reality series about relatives of celebrities who have to keep their family connections a secret while trying to guess the others' famous ties.

RELATED: Claim to Fame — All the Celebrity Relatives Who Have Been Revealed So Far

Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg

Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Whoopi Goldberg

When Crystal, 74, appeared on The View in May, co-host Goldberg, 66, called him "my big brother." Back in November 2020, Crystal made a surprise appearance on the talk show for Goldberg's birthday, and gifted her a sentimental photo of them with Williams, who died in 2014 at the age of 63. He said he looks at the photo "every morning."

"The three of us did some good work," Goldberg said, recalling their time fundraising via the Comic Relief charity shows.

Goldberg has previously elaborated on how she came up with her stage name — admitting it had to do with passing gas. When she was on The Graham Norton Show back in 2017, she explained the moniker is "because I was a bit of a farter."

"The theaters I worked in were so small, they didn't have a lot of backstage room, so if you were gassy, you had to [fart noises] all the way through. People would say, 'You are like a whoopee cushion.' And so that's what it became," she said at the time.