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M3GAN star Allison Williams is making a niche for herself in horror movies. But as she recently revealed, becoming a scream queen wasn’t something she had imagined for her career. 

Allison Williams poses for the camera at a screening of "M3GAN"
Allison Williams attends a screening of “M3GAN” I Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Universal Pictures

Allison Williams plays a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein in ‘M3GAN’ 

M3GAN stars Williams as Gemma, a genius roboticist working for a tech toy company under her demanding boss David (Ronnie Chieng). Gemma develops a life-like AI doll named M3GAN, who is meant to be a companion and protector of the user it’s paired with. 

Her initial trials of the doll fail. And after David scraps the project, Gemma secretly continues to improve on M3GAN. When her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is orphaned, Gemma takes her in and pairs her with the robot.

However, M3GAN takes her initiative to protect Cady quite literally. And she begins murdering anyone she views as a threat. 

Allison Williams didn’t think she’d be in horror movies after ‘Girls’ 

After starting her career with projects like American Dreams and Will & Kate: Before Happily Ever After, Williams landed her breakout role in 2012 in the HBO series Girls. She remained part of the main cast as Marnie Michaels for all six seasons. 

In 2017, Williams starred in Jordan Peele‘s Academy Award-winning film, Get Out. The movie redefined the horror genre and paved the way for Williams’ future roles. She’s since appeared in the 2018 psychological thriller, The Perfection, and the 2020 adventure thriller, Horizon Line. M3GAN is her third horror movie. 

In a recent interview with Vulture, Williams revealed that horror movies were never part of her career plan. She had imagined herself in more “classic leading lady” roles. But after Get Out, the M3GAN star realized that this new genre of horror was offering her complex and challenging roles she could be proud of. 

“[Get Out] told me that horror doesn’t have to be purely scary,” Williams told Nine Celebrity. “I realized that the parts of the movie that I enjoy the most are when they’re relieving the tension and relieving the pressure. And you can kind of see the characters behaving normally.”

“And so what better than to combine horror with comedy, with levity, with moments of realism of just normal life,” she added. “I learned from Get Out that that can work really well, and you can talk about serious things while you’re playing with all of these other tones.”

The ‘M3GAN’ star says horror movies have allowed her to play ‘cool’ women

In all three of her horror movies, Williams’ characters were strong and capable women. In Get Out, she plays Rose, a villain who carefully orchestrated her racist agenda.

In The Perfection, she portrays a talented cellist who turns to violence to save her friend. And with her role as a dedicated scientist in M3GAN, Williams noted that her horror career has allowed her to play some pretty amazing women. 

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‘M3GAN’ Star Allison Williams Says it was ‘Strange’ to Film With the Doll

“The women in these movies, these women that I’ve played, are just cool,” she told SlashFilm. 

“I engage with the characters that I’m being asked to read for. And so often they don’t have time in the thematic world of the movie or in the story to become meaty and three-dimensional and someone I feel existed before the movie and continues to exist after, let alone someone I feel like I know.”

Williams added:

“So that combination, plus the fact that filmmakers really get to just make what they imagine in this world, they get to let their genre freak flags fly, and these movies live lives that are very specific and very much lived in the spirit of the filmmaker … I just find that experience to be thrilling.”

M3GAN is currently playing in movie theaters across the country. 

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