Michelle Williams Once Shared Why It Was Uncomfortable Standing Too Close to Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling shared a strong bond with his co-star Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine. After getting to know the actor, Williams shared what she found uncomfortable about being around Gosling.

Michelle Williams opened up on her time with Ryan Gosling for ‘Blue Valentine’

When Williams collaborated with Gosling for the feature, the pair went the extra mile to inhabit their Blue Valentine characters. They played a couple whose marriage wasn’t in a very healthy place in the romantic drama. The film would show their characters in different stages of their lives. They were shown as a young, passionate couple, and much more weathered lovers on the brink of a divorce.

To better capture their roles, Gosling and Williams really lived with each other for a month.

“During the month, we tried to dismantle this thing that we had been building,” Gosling once said according to NPR. “[Originally,] we all worked really hard to create this love story portion, when they’re falling in love. We wanted it to feel genuine and real and true. And we spent all of this time building it up, and then we had to tear it down.”

While bonding, Williams couldn’t help notice how observant the Barbie star was when it came to her, which was sometimes unnerving.

“He’s an unsettlingly perceptive person, Ryan. Sometimes you don’t want to be too close to him because he sees so much it’s uncomfortable,” Williams once told The Telegraph.

Michelle Williams once revealed she would roll down her window and scream because of her love scenes with Ryan Gosling

One of the movie’s most memorable sequences was a love scene between Gosling’s and Williams’ characters. The take was different than most romantic scenes depicted in movies, as it showed the couple trying to be intimate while angry with each other. In an interview with MTV News, Gosling reflected on how challenging the scene was.

“It was hard…a lot of times actors can trick people into thinking something is happening when it’s not happening, and we had to call ourselves out on anything that didn’t feel honest,” Gosling said. “Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other’s light and not stepping on each other’s lines. All of these things are artificial, and you have to strip that away if you’re going to achieve a sense of intimacy.”

Meanwhile, Williams had a much more visceral reaction to the scene in question.

“We never rehearsed anything, and those were really dark days. We shot the beginning of our relationship first, and it was fun and alive,” Williams said in an interview with W Magazine. “Then we did the sex scenes and it was…toxic. Ryan and I had stopped relating to each other as Ryan and Michelle. Those scenes took forever. I had a long drive from set to home each night, and I would roll down all the windows and turn up the music as loud as I could and hang my head out the window like a dog and scream. It was my escape.”

Michelle Williams never had a connection with another actor that rivaled hers and Ryan Gosling’s

Williams has worked with several other male co-stars during her years in the film industry. But The Greatest Showman actor admitted that her and Gosling’s chemistry was unique.

“I’ve never had this kind of connection with another actor before. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I knew that this person was on board and had been preparing the role for six years,” she once said on Interview.

Blue Valentine took several years to make to film. During that time, Williams thought she was the only actor still invested in the feature. She was surprised to know that Gosling had similar feelings.

“A project like Blue Valentine took years to get off the ground, and I was able to stick with it,” she said. “I first read the script when I was 21, 22, and it became my reason for being for the longest time. When I ran into Ryan, he said, ‘What about that movie?’ I was surprised; I thought Blue Valentine existed only in my head. Until he said that, I was worried it wasn’t quite as good as I had thought. He validated my reaction.”