‘M3GAN’ Star Allison Williams Talks Her Blumhouse Good Fortune and the Internal Debate Over M3GAN’s Viral Dance

M3GAN star Allison Williams picked her spot just right with regard to her Blumhouse return.

After the generational success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out in 2017, Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum knew he wanted to quickly reteam with all the key players involved, but Williams instead opted to take her time and wait for the most optimal circumstances. Well, those instincts have proved to be correct as Williams’ return to the big screen in Gerard Johnstone’s techno-horror film has received critical acclaim and a strong opening night at the box office.

In the Blum and James Wan-produced film, Williams plays Gemma, a roboticist who utilizes her doll-like android, M3GAN, to look after her grieving niece Cady (Violet McGraw), as she juggles newfound parenthood and her career. For Williams, returning to Blumhouse was just a matter of timing and whether the project commented on a larger conversation, which, in this case, was the increasing presence of AI in our day-to-day lives.

“The other things that came along weren’t right either for timing, or it just wasn’t quite the right part,” Williams tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And so from the minute I heard from [Jason Blum] about M3GAN, I was inclined to want to say yes, unlike before where other circumstances meant that it wasn’t the right thing.”

As soon as the trailer for M3GAN dropped, the Internet was abuzz over M3GAN’s unhinged dancing en route to a kill. However, there was an internal debate about whether to save the now-viral footage for the moviegoing experience.

“When we saw the first cut of the trailer, we were all hemming and hawing about whether or not to let the dance be out in the trailer or try to keep it as a surprise in the movie,” Williams shares. “And boy, the forces of marketing at Universal were right to keep it in the trailer, because it just helped, honestly.”

In a recent conversation with THR, Williams also discusses the pros and cons of AI, before offering her thoughts on Peele’s latest film, Nope.

Well, as the glowing reviews prove, you continue to be Blumhouse’s good luck charm. I know M3GAN has a different ambition, but are you feeling a version of what you felt a few years ago with that other Blumhouse movie? 

(Laughs.) That other Blumhouse movie … Gosh, I do feel similar in some ways. It’s funny you mentioned that because today and yesterday, as the reviews have been coming in, I’ve been experiencing this collision of two things that were definitely in play when Get Out was about to come out in theaters. It was this combination of buzz and excitement and critical kindness or appreciation. Although the subject matter and the specifics of it all are, of course, extremely different from one another, but both have that feeling of, “I think people are excited about this and they might go see it.” They might also go see a movie in a genre they don’t typically see because both movies have a blend of comedy and horror.

So for the horror fans, they’re like, “It’s James Wan and Blumhouse. I’m there.” And then, for the techies, it’s this idea of an AI doll that’s interesting. But for my parents and their friends, for whom this is a genre that they desperately wish I would make movies outside of, reading the press around it has compelled them to be like, “I think this is a movie I might enjoy, aside from just wanting to be supportive of Allison.” And that is so great. I think people who like movies of all genres will enjoy this one, and seeing it in a packed theater, which I’ve now done twice, is just a blast. It sounds strange because it’s scary, but it really is. It’s a treat. So there are things about it that certainly feel very similar, and hopefully that continues. I just feel really lucky, honestly.

Well, it’s been a minute since we last saw you on the big screen, and the world has obviously changed a lot these last few years. It’s even prompted a bunch of filmmakers to make these very personal and even semi-autobiographical movies of late. So have the events of the last few years led you to adjust your perspective towards acting and your career at all? 

The biggest adjustment has just been slowing down and really bifurcating work from life. That was sort of a personal life transition in addition to the world slowing down because of the pandemic. So now it feels like my job is my job rather than my life, and I think that’s a really healthy transition. But what’s fascinating is that it doesn’t make moments like this any less exciting. If anything else, I feel the excitement of this much more deeply than I felt the excitement before, and it’s because I have a greater perspective on it. I have lived more life. I know how these things can go, and not to be repetitive, but I feel so lucky that it’s gone well. So to that end, I feel like my perspective on my career has been rightsized. Perhaps other people have come out of the gate with those perspectives, but I had to kind of grow them. I started out at 22, and so my work and my life were merged from the beginning. So I’d say that’s the biggest change.

The other thing is something that’s been there from the beginning, but it feels like it’s been sharpened in the last couple of years where there’s been a lot of conversation about what roles we are or aren’t entitled to as performers. And I think I’ve always had a pretty good barometer. I’m sure someone will be able to find fault somewhere, but I do feel like I’ve had a pretty good sense for what is a role for me and what isn’t. And I just think I’m continuing to sharpen that sense of like, “Oh, this is a really cool movie with a really cool part, but it is not for me. It’s not mine to play.” And so just having the faith that I can wait for the right thing or produce the right thing to come along, that needs me in it, rather than someone else whose story is more directly being told. That’s the other part of it that has progressed, as well as the producing aspect.

So has Jason Blum’s premiere costume kept you up at night?

(Laughs.) It hasn’t, although my wish is that he would learn the dance. I just yearn to see not only the costume, but also the full performance. And so far, that hasn’t happened. But if we do well enough this weekend, perhaps he’ll break out and dance at some point. 

Besides those premiere photos, the two of you will forever be linked by the phenomenon that was Get Out, and I just love how you’re maintaining your relationship by way of M3GAN. Jason actually told me that he’s offered you a couple things prior to this, so what made M3GAN the right situation to say yes?

I was just texting with him like two minutes ago. We were talking about how excited we both are and how much we love working together. The other things that came along weren’t right either for timing, or it just wasn’t quite the right part. But with each of them, anytime Jason comes my way, I’m inclined to want to do whatever it is because I love being in business with Jason and with Blumhouse. I find it to be an incredibly rewarding experience, creatively. It’s very freeing and very trusting of the filmmaker, and it’s very respectful for all the people involved. It’s structured in such a way that it incentivizes you to really get behind the thing that you’re working on, which is something I do anyway. So it’s just a very natural melding of value systems, and so from the minute I heard from him about M3GAN, I was inclined to want to say yes, unlike before where other circumstances meant that it wasn’t the right thing.

As I read the script, as I met Gerard [Johnstone], as I continued to get into it, it just became more and more enticing. And obviously the idea of working with James Wan for the first time was just another sweetener, and I was sold very quickly on the idea of doing it. I also try to do things that are speaking to some element of current thought or anxiety, ideally. And I do feel like in the last couple of years, I’ve had a number of conversations with friends, particularly my friends who are parents, about tech, our lives and their strategies around their kids with technology. So when I read the script, I realized that M3GAN was jumping into that conversation in a way that I really liked because the best horror picks up something that you’re already slightly worried about or uneasy about. So I would happily work with Jason, Blumhouse and Universal forever. I’ve had two fantastic banner experiences so far.

Whether it’s stressing the use of coasters or protecting her collectibles, Gemma seems to have a form of OCD., and as a roboticist, it’s probably a benefit to that type of precision work. But based on a prior conversation of ours, why did you opt not to diagnose her behavior?

Well, culturally, I feel like people very casually drop these diagnoses into conversation. “Oh, it’s my OCD. I’m so ADD.” So I just want to be sensitive to the fact that those are actual diagnoses that some people have, not that there’s any value judgment associated with them. It’s just that in our prep for it, we never diagnosed Gemma with anything. It just wasn’t the way I thought about her. I thought about all of those qualities as being very specifically linked to particular activities, which is why I didn’t think it was an overarching aspect of her personality or her cognition. I think that she is meticulous with regard to some things. For example, she paid for that kitchen table or the end table in the guest room, and to have rings on those tables from condensation on glasses is just something that she wouldn’t love.

But there are parts of her house that aren’t meticulously organized, and someone with that personality profile might have a better chance of immediately getting everything together for a niece in that situation. And so I love the parts of Gemma that seem out of step with each other, where we can see her applying a certain level of specificity and attention to detail in one area of her life and a complete negligence in another. That is very appealing to me. The way she dresses is very clear that she’s not putting a ton of thought or care into her clothes and the way she puts them all together. But she is putting that kind of attention into other areas of her life and the way things are organized in her workshop. So those are the things that she feels deserves that amount of attention from her.

When we’re first introduced to Gemma, she definitely has the look of someone who spends most of her time in a lab or workshop. You found inspiration from real-life people in similar fields, right? 

Yeah, I spoke to people in these fields about all kinds of things, from the much more highbrow, intellectual subjects, most of which I didn’t understand, to the more pedestrian subjects like, “What do you wear to work every day? Do you do your hair in the morning? Do you wear makeup?” And so her whole aesthetic was inspired by the answers to those questions. If you’re doing work or any kind of manual labor all day in a lab, you’re going to dress very differently from if you are doing a kind of public-facing PR or marketing job where you’re going to be interacting with people, potential clients, et cetera. She is working with the same two coworkers all day, every day with tools, and that is going to lend itself to a very different wardrobe.

And not to go too far into the Steve Jobs territory, but I do think people in this line of work are very big fans of optimizing for various things, including their time and removing any kind of decision fatigue from their life. And so having a wardrobe that’s pretty simple and repetitive is much easier to deal with if you’re someone like Gemma and your mind is already in your lab and your body happens to be in a closet and just needs to get clothes on. So that’s how we thought about her look, aesthetically.

I realize this movie is meant to be a cool piece of heightened entertainment, but with real companies trying to build M3GAN-like robots and androids as we speak, I definitely walked out somewhat worried about the direction we’re headed. So how concerned are you about the way things are going?

I feel very torn and very hypocritical about it all because I do feel that we, by and large, benefit so much on a day-to-day basis from various different forms of AI and from technology in general. We benefit from feeling known by our devices, which is a very strange way of putting it, but people sheepishly admit when they buy things because they’ve been served an ad on Instagram. There’s this reluctance to admit that the algorithm has us so nailed and so figured out. And yet, it’s kind of nice to feel like your app knows what you’re going to want to see and buy. It’s nice in that creepy, unsettling kind of way. So my prevailing sense is that the more we can opt in and talk about it while it’s still progressing is a really good thing, versus having a retrospective when it’s progressed and we’re all talking in the past tense while trying to grapple with what already exists.

When we spoke before about how I talked to people in the field of AI, one of the things that was most remarkable to me is the culture of openness. There’s a lot of proprietary work being done, of course, but for the most part, there is this very collegial atmosphere of wanting to share work and share ideas. So I found that to be really inspiring, exciting and interesting. I, perhaps naively, was not expecting to encounter that at all. I was expecting there to be much more secrecy about who’s working on what, but in AI specifically, and certainly with OpenAI, the idea is to have projects that other people can peek in on and work with and tinker with. And to just talk about the ethics of it, where we’re going, why, how quickly, should we, those are questions that people in this field engage with pretty regularly. So I think the rest of us would do well to do the same.

Even in the last few weeks, these AI illustrations and AI chatbots like ChatGPT have become popular on social media, and within our own industry, AI can now recreate Darth Vader’s voice for the sake of performance. So have you prepared yourself for the day when an AI-written script lands on your desk?

I hadn’t thought about that until this very moment.

I’m so sorry! 

(Laughs.) No, it’s fine. Listen, if it’s good, it’s good. One of the things that’s most interesting about this movie is asking ourselves why the human feels so much more. Obviously, this movie is presenting an exaggerated version of it, but why human is better than nothing. We are so programmed to select what feels visceral, what feels real, what feels human, even if it’s technically not doing as good a job. Look, I don’t have the ability to know someone’s temperature and heart rate by looking at them, but M3GAN does. Is there an argument to be made that while a little kid is asleep and they’re not feeling well, would it be better for a robot to be watching them than a human? Those are the kinds of things that we just have a knee-jerk response to, such as, “It should be a human. That’s so creepy.”

But what is more effective? What is better? What is going to create better results? All of this is stuff we need to talk about. I think people who write scripts are irreplaceable. Of course, a bot could write a script, and I’d be very curious to see what it would look like. I’m sure it’s happened already, but you’re not going to be able to do away with us that quickly. Screenwriters, actors, directors, we all technically could be replaced, eventually, but I’m really hoping that’s far away. I think that the human-lived experience that writers can bring to the page is something that is really hard to replicate, but like everything else, eventually, they will learn how. So we’ll just have to think about how we’re going to handle it ahead of time. How do those contracts work? I don’t know.

When you saw some of the early shots of M3GAN dancing, did you know you’d found the Internet’s newest sensation?

The first time I saw it was when Amie [Donald] was practicing the dance, and then I watched her film it. I wasn’t in the scene that day, but I went to set because I knew she was filming it and I wanted to be there. And it was just extraordinary. Watching the performance of it, in and of itself, was unbelievable, and by then, we were all very, very familiar with Amie’s brilliance as a performer. But it wasn’t until I saw it fully edited into the movie, in its context, with the song, with everything, that I was like, “Oh, this is iconic.” And then, when we saw the first cut of the trailer, we were all hemming and hawing about whether or not to let the dance be out in the trailer or try to keep it as a surprise in the movie.

And boy, the forces of marketing at Universal were right to keep it in the trailer, because it just helped, honestly. I don’t think there’s anything else in our trailer that helps convey who she is more quickly than knowing that she’s a doll who’s going to stop and do a choreographed dance and then pick up a murder weapon and go on her way. That bizarre, off-kilter, hilarious freakishness is exactly what we were going for, and so it really was a perfect illustration of where we wanted to be.

So the people reading this interview are probably curious about your take on Jordan Peele’s Nope. Do you mind indulging in such an interest?

I actually just texted Jordan yesterday. Gosh, there’s so many different parts of it that I could talk about, but yesterday, I was thinking a lot about the cinematographer in the movie and the drive to capture something impossible. It’s the drive to get the most gritty, violent, dangerous shot imaginable, and as we just talked about in terms of prioritizing the real of our business, it was just such a wonderful call out of our business for thinking that the more hardcore something is, the more worthy it is. And so I’ve just been thinking about that a lot, not that I teeter into that territory at all, but I’ve just been thinking about that archetype of the visual explorer and someone who is willing to die for the shot.

Obviously, when we’re making something collaborative and artistic, no one needs to get hurt doing it, and absolutely no one should. So calling us out for thinking that hardcore is admirable is a really interesting choice in the movie, but there’s so much else. There’s the idea of being seen by others and what we would look like from above and from beyond when we turn trauma into spectacle. So I think about all of it quite often, honestly, and I can’t wait to see whatever Jordan is dreaming up next.

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M3GAN is now playing in movie theaters. This interview was edited for length and clarity.