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Allison Williams is known for her roles in horror movies and thrillers. Currently, the actor stars in box-office smash M3GAN. Williams plays Gemma, a roboticist at a toy company. When she unexpectedly gains custody of her niece, Cady, Gemma uses M3GAN, an AI doll her company is developing, to comfort the young girl. However, things take a violent turn when M3GAN takes her role as Cady’s best friend and protector too seriously. 

With roles like this, one would assume that Williams loves all things scary, but the actor is very open about the fact that she’s not a horror fan — and revealed an interesting reason why she can’t watch scary movies. 

Allison Williams’ horror roles

Allison Williams poses in front of a black backdrop at the "M3GAN" premiere.
Allison Williams attends the Los Angeles Premiere of “M3GAN” I Leon Bennett/Getty Images

Williams rose to stardom after appearing in HBO’s Girls, but her most memorable appearances have been in horror movies. She starred in Jordan Peele’s blockbuster Get Out, which ended up winning Best Screenplay at 2018’s Oscars. She also starred in The Perfection, a psychological thriller about two musicians. 

While many fans view Williams as a scream queen, the actress revealed that she does not actually love the genre. In an interview with Nine, Williams admitted she is “too scared to watch horror movies.”

Allison Williams is ‘too scared’ to watch scary movies

“I watched a bunch of them when I was younger,” she explained. “It ruined me for life, but then I slowly started watching them again.” Williams also shared that starring in Get Out helped her view horror differently — instead of jumpscares and gore, movies could terrify audiences with moments of suspense. 

Williams talked further about her love-hate relationship with the horror genre, telling Dead Meat, “I have a great love for this genre, but not a very strong stomach for it, so I actually didn’t think I could handle making movies in it.”

What the actor loves about making horror movies

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Williams said that it was Get Out that ultimately changed her mind about not only making scary movies, but also how she read scripts.

“I really started looking for characters that would kind of play around with what audiences thought of me post-Get Out that also felt like real, interesting, three-dimensional women,” Williams explained, adding that she also looked for “timely” subjects and “a good story.”

Williams also shared that working in horror movies is interesting because “original ideas can really prosper…things constantly are surprising people and subverting expectations.” She also praised M3GAN’s director Gerard Johnstone for the “quirky sense of humor” he brought to the film. 

“That’s the kind of thing that Gerard is able to do so well,” the actress said. “Like, just create these moments of discomfort and then relief through humor that just operate through the movie as a nice little…harmony to go along with the more heavy aspects.”

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