ALLISON WILLIAMS

On producing and starring with

What was your journey to this movie?

I first got involved in the fall of 2019. I got a text from Jason Blum, something to the effect of, “I’m sending you something, we’re going to need your help again.” Very flattering, obviously. Reading the script, getting to know Gerard, starting to work on it, it just became clear that this is M3GAN’S moment. It’s a project of our time, I think. I wanted to do everything I could to help bring it to life, including produce on it, but also be Gemma, the person who literally brings M3GAN to life.

What was it about the script that particularly attracted you?

There are a couple of different things operating in parallel. One is there’s a very real human story at the centre of it, which is that Gemma’s being asked to show up for her niece in a way that she isn’t sure she can, and isn’t sure she wants to. So that very human feeling of inadequacy in the face of real struggle was something that drew me to it.

Then, of course, there was just the idea of how quickly we seem to be headed in the direction of companions that are not of human origin. It starts with Siri or Alexa. It just feels like we’re marching in this direction a little and to extrapolate us forward slightly to see what it might look like was very, very interesting to me.

What was it like working opposite M3GAN?

M3GAN is M3GAN. M3GAN is unlike anyone I’ve ever worked with before. A really unique experience. That is all I’ll say for now. I want people to just think of her as who and what she is for now. But it was definitely a different kind of working experience, for sure.

What do you think people will take away from seeing M3GAN?

What they leave thinking about is going to sort of be a Rorschach test. The movie has a lot of areas that one could get stuck in, and think about, and iterate on, and it’ll be really interesting to hear how people come away from it. I do think one of the central themes of this movie, and often in movies about the interface of humanity and technology, is just that there is something about humans that is irreplaceable – and we lose sight of that at our peril. So I’m hoping that as we walk out of the theatre with our fellow humans, we’ll look at them in a new way. And then when we get home to our smartphones, we will look at those in a new way as well.