\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>f you had wandered the set of the film M3gan 2.0 last year, chances are you would have stumbled into M3gan, the terrifying humanoid doll, staring lifelessly while she waited to be called for her next scene. Sometimes she would stand in the corner of the soundstage, says Allison Williams with a nervy laugh. \u201cThe dilemma is: do you turn her around so she\u2019s facing the wall, or do you let her face the room? Both answers are wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n In the sequel to the sci-fi horror M3gan, Williams resumes her role as Gemma, a roboticist who has become a crusader against rampant and reckless AI development after her creation \u2013 developed for her orphaned niece \u2013 became murderous. (She is also a producer on the second film.)<\/p>\n Acting opposite M3gan was unsettling, says Williams, speaking over a video call from a hotel room in New York. Sometimes she was played by the 15-year-old dancer Amie Donald, but often she was a robotic doll, animated by a small team. \u201cWhen she\u2019s been working for a while, her eyelids can get sticky,\u201d says Williams. M3gan\u2019s handlers would paint lubricant on to her eyeballs with a brush and Williams would have to catch herself: \u201cShe\u2019s not flinching and for a second you\u2019re like: \u2018Ugh.\u2019 Then you remember: this is not a live thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Still best known for her first role as Marnie in Lena Dunham\u2019s landmark TV series Girls, Williams has gravitated towards comedy-tinged horror in recent years. Her first post-Girls film role was in the Oscar-winning dark comedy horror Get Out. It and M3gan were relatively low-budget projects that became cultural phenomena \u2013 Get Out for its commentary on racial politics, M3gan for what it says about the dangers of AI (as well as the uncanniness of M3gan herself).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>Watch the trailer for M3gan 2.0 \u2013 video.<\/span><\/p>\n Williams has long been interested in AI \u2013 she knows Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, who put her in touch with robotics experts when she was researching the role of Gemma. The film raises questions not only about the danger of rogue AI, but about the ethical concerns \u2013including how we should feel about the \u201crights\u201d of devices. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to imbue anything that has AI in it with humanity. Like our little robot vacuum we have at our house; I often feel it\u2019s doing all this labour and being overlooked.\u201d<\/p>\n Does she worry that her job will be taken by AI in the not-too-distant future? She laughs. \u201cIf you ask me any question that starts with: \u2018Are you worried?\u2019 the answer is always yes, because I have an endless capacity to be worried about things.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s possible, she says, that humans in acting, or any other job, are not special or unique and that \u201cwe will all be seamlessly replaced. But so far, especially in the arts, I haven\u2019t yet had an experience that\u2019s supposed to mimic a human output that has felt seamlessly human to me \u2013 and who knows if that\u2019s going to be true for ever. For now, it\u2019s towards the bottom of the list of things I worry about.\u201d She smiles. \u201cBut it\u2019s not not<\/em> on the list of things I worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n M3gan raises questions about the tech to which we expose our children. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t give your child cocaine,\u201d says Gemma in M3gan 2.0. \u201cWhy would you give them a smartphone?\u201d Williams\u2019 son is three and she is wary of it. \u201cHe has so many questions and they\u2019re incredible; I often don\u2019t know the answers.\u201d The other day, she says, she used ChatGPT to answer one about rocket launches. \u201cWatching what happened to his face was like when Gemma sees her niece interacting with M3gan. Like, I have connected my kid to a drug, this is so immediately addictive and intoxicating.\u201d She quickly put her phone away and made a mental note to go to the library next time to get out a book. \u201cI can\u2019t justify it, logically,\u201d she says. \u201cIt just felt like an innate instinct.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Cultural phenomenon \u2026 with Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out.<\/span> Photograph: Justin Lubin\/PA<\/p>\n Parenting is the central theme of the new podcast Williams launched this month with two friends, Hope Kremer, an early childhood educator, and Jaymie Oppenheim, a therapist. It came out of a group chat in which just about everything to do with motherhood, ageing and life in general was discussed. A future episode is about the guilt many mothers feel, which is also a theme in M3gan 2.0. Will our expectations of mothers ever change? \u201cOh God, I hope so,\u201d says Williams. \u201cThe guilt, I think, is most potent in the absence of a community where you can voice the things that you feel guilt about. I think the guilt around what kind of parent we all are is something that only survives as long as we hold each other to insane standards and expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n She is, she says, \u201cfilled with rage about the majority of Instagram and TikTok \u2018mom content\u2019 \u2013 the aspirational version of it, anyway. I think it\u2019s poisonous [and] it really only exists to make people feel bad about themselves, maybe under the guise of wanting to motivate people, but the impact is so painful.\u201d<\/p>\n She laughs as she describes the dishonesty of an influencer making a perfect packed lunch, filled with nutritious food \u2013 because it\u2019s actually 4pm, perhaps, or because they have nannies \u2013 that makes other parents, primarily mothers, feel as if they are failing. \u201cI would be in a puddle on the ground if we didn\u2019t have the nanny that we have, who is the reason my husband is shooting in London right now and I\u2019m here,\u201d says Williams. \u201cNone of this is possible without her, and we\u2019re so grateful. I\u2019m just like, show your work. Show me a clock. Like, what day was this filmed?\u201d She is laughing, but she is on a roll. \u201cI cannot stand artifice about creating an expectation of what someone should be able to achieve that is totally unreasonable. Who is that helping?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018We were easy targets\u2019 \u2026 (from left)<\/em> Lena Dunham, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke and Williams in Girls.<\/span> Photograph: PR Company Handout<\/p>\n On another episode, she says, they discuss ageing and unrealistic beauty standards: \u201cI talk about my love for Botox when I\u2019m not filming, because, you know, you need to make facial expressions when you\u2019re shooting.\u201d She laughs. \u201cBut, right now, there\u2019s not a ton I can do with my forehead. But the idea that someone would look at me and be, like: \u2018I should be capable of that forehead.\u2019 No, you shouldn\u2019t! I\u2019m not better than you because I have no wrinkles there, I just paid to put chemicals in my face. Let\u2019s be real about this.\u201d<\/p>\n I always think it\u2019s quite an achievement for famous people to hang on to pre-fame friends, once acclaim and money start getting in the way. Is it important to have \u201cnormal\u201d friends? \u201cI don\u2019t walk the world and feel like a celebrity,\u201d says Williams. \u201cI think I did in my 20s, shooting and living in New York. But that isn\u2019t how I feel dropping our son off at preschool; I feel like a person among people. My job is public, and that\u2019s unique and weird, and our culture thinks it\u2019s more important than other jobs, for sure. But, in our friend group, we celebrate what everyone\u2019s up to and that has been such a stable, steady source of nourishment in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams noticed recently that her son is about the same age she was when she realised acting could be a job and that she might one day do it (his father, Alexander Dreymon, is also an actor; Williams and Dreymon met on the 2020 thriller Horizon Line). She watched bits of The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins and it dawned on her that the woman in both films was the same. \u201cJulie Andrews was like a goddess to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her parents, the former NBC news anchor Brian Williams and the producer Jane Stoddard Williams, insisted she get an education, which she did (English at Yale), rather than become a child actor. \u201cI\u2019m grateful that my parents didn\u2019t cave and that I didn\u2019t make my way into this business any sooner than I did, because already, at 23, when Girls came out, that was a lot to process.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not better than you because I have no wrinkles in my forehead, I just paid to put chemicals in my face<\/p>\n In a way, Williams had the reverse experience \u2013 her parent was famous. At a time before media was so fragmented, being an NBC news anchor meant Brian Williams reached millions of people. His reputation took a battering in 2015, when it was revealed he had embellished \u2013 mistakenly, he said \u2013 a story about being shot down in a helicopter while covering the Iraq war. He was suspended for six months and left NBC shortly after.<\/p>\n What was that like to go through as a family? \u201cAnything that feels loud, like people are talking about you and all of that, is horrible,\u201d says Williams. \u201cI think it\u2019s the underbelly of the media \u2013 it happens all the time, they eat their own. Everything just goes back to its fundamental priorities \u2013 family, friends, people who matter.\u201d<\/p>\n In the recent criticism of nepo babies, Williams has always been admirably upfront and unguarded about her advantages. \u201cAside from all the many layers of privilege, high on the list is the fact that I could pursue a career in acting without being worried that I wasn\u2019t going to be able to feed myself. I had been surrounded by people who did what I wanted to do.\u201d It didn\u2019t seem like an unreachable dream when Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, were family friends. When she was still at high school, she got a summer job as a production assistant on Robert Altman\u2019s A Prairie Home Companion and got to be around its starry ensemble cast, which included Meryl Streep. \u201cHaving had that experience gives you a leg-up when finally it\u2019s your turn and you have to know how to be on a set and how it all works.\u201d<\/p>\n Gratitude seems to be a defining theme in Williams\u2019 life. She is happy she is not starting out now. There was huge hype around Girls during its six-year run, which ended in 2017, but she can\u2019t imagine what that would be like with social media now. (Williams came off Instagram in 2020 \u2013 a time, she felt, when the platform was becoming more cynical and toxic.) It was, she says, as if there were \u201ca gazillion think pieces about every episode that we did \u2013 and most thought we all took ourselves too seriously. We were all pretty privileged people who were the leads of this HBO show that was definitely skewering our own, but we weren\u2019t given credit for that, or for being in on it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018When she\u2019s been working for a while, her eyelids can get sticky\u2019 \u2026 Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw) with M3gan in the original film.<\/span> Photograph: Geoffrey Short\/Universal Pictures<\/p>\n Some of the criticism was valid \u2013 it was set in New York, yet was overwhelmingly white \u2013 but much of it was misogynistic and more. \u201cThe shame is that, when it is coupled with misogyny and fatphobia and everything, the valid criticism gets lost.\u201d Some of the coverage was so mean, she says with a laugh, especially on Gawker, which didn\u2019t describe the lead characters by their names, but as the daughters of the famous parent each actor had. \u201cWe were easy targets, I get it.\u201d<\/p>\n For a while, Williams struggled with people assuming she was inseparable from her character, Marnie, a narcissist verging on sociopathy. \u201cI really desired to put distance between us, because I thought that was the kind of acting everybody respected \u2013 like, I\u2019m wearing a prosthetic nose and I gained 40lbs, or whatever. And here [our characters] were, who looked basically like we looked and sounded like we sounded, but crucially said and did things that we would never do. It always felt weird that, since we didn\u2019t transform ourselves in some way, people weren\u2019t buying us playing characters.\u201d<\/p>\n Mostly though, she says, it was an amazing experience. Will there be a reunion? \u201cI would love it,\u201d says Williams. \u201cI know that Zosia [Mamet, who played Shoshanna] has been pushing for a spin-off, which I would voraciously consume and try to elbow my way into. I kind of want us all back together. It was so fun and it was the beginning of my career, so I didn\u2019t have the perspective I have now on just how lucky we were, or to know how unusual a creative experience it was.\u201d<\/p>\n For those of us who loved Girls, I can think of nothing better \u2013 four hilarious, horrendous humans, no scary AI doll in sight.<\/p>\n <\/em>Allison Williams\u2019 podcast, Landlines, is available now. M3gan 2.0 is in cinemas on 27 June<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you had wandered the set of the film M3gan 2.0 last year, chances are you would have stumbled into M3gan, the terrifying humanoid doll, staring lifelessly while she waited to be called for her next scene. Sometimes she would stand in the corner of the soundstage, says Allison Williams with a nervy laugh. \u201cThe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1574,733,1575,1579,1578,1576,1572,1573,1577,195],"class_list":{"0":"post-9384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-allison","9":"tag-babies","10":"tag-girls","11":"tag-m3gan","12":"tag-momfluencers","13":"tag-nepo","14":"tag-pretty","15":"tag-privileged","16":"tag-toxic","17":"tag-williams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}