It's not Michelle Williams' fault, not really. The moment I see her in the lobby of Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel, sitting on a couch with her manager (An actress who arrives early for an interview? What's next -- sheep cloning?), I hear (in my head, anyway; the hotel's muzak is some sort of unrecognizable "classical" pastiche) that song. That Paula Cole song, the one about how she doesn't want to wait for something something something. That awful treacly, unavoidable Paula Cole song, the ubiquity of which has become somehow part of its compositional fabric, as if the intent of the song were less musical than cultural, making it a possibly fascist artifact, though I'd prefer (for reasons of national security) not to get into motives here. You hear the song whenever you see, in either two or three dimensions, a member of the cast of Dawson's Creek, the Kevin Willimason-penned teen tube drama. You've been conditioned by TV to hear it (whether it's actually playing or not) through direct linkage of the show/song repeated numberless times, to the extent that even MTV found it necessary to parody the phenomenon during its recent Movie Awards. TV turning on itself is never pretty; in the case, however, the skit was entirely justified, even (yeah!) funny. The point is, anyhow, that like you, I'm fucking sick of the song. But it's not Michelle Williams' fault.
Where most of us would feel lucky to play a small part in even one pop cultural event, Williams represents at present at least two. One: the aforementioned Dawson's, where she's a featured player, and its attendant resonance within the notoriously fickle teen demographic. Two: the burgeoning crossover of young actors from small to the big screen: Neve Cambell (Party Of Five), Sara Michelle Gellar (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party Of Five), and assorted others have made the leap from medium to medium (and back again) in the past couple of years, and now it's Williams' turn. Featured roles in such upcoming probable blockbusters as Halloween H2O, the twentieth anniversary Halloween sequel, and Dick, a Watergate-era comedy paired with Interview With A Vampire's Kirsten Dunst, along with the second season of Dawson's ensure that Williams will not only continue to work steadily, but mat even face a modicum of (increased) fame.
In person, Michelle exhibits the self-possession and articulate nature common to young actors, but in her case the precocity is genuine, and hard-won. She moved to Los Angeles from San Diego on her own at 14, was legally emancipated from her (apparently supportive, possibly insane) parents at 16, and now, just hitting 18, has passed safely through a period of self-destructive behavior and developed an air of well-spoken worldliness that belies her relative youth. I have to keep reminding myself she's only 18, an age at which I had only just mastered the art of tying my shoes. The first thing she says to me is "Mind if I smoke?" Which I suppose is endearing only if, like me, you like to smoke, but it soon becomes clear that, unlike her Dawson's character (Jen), Michelle's charms are of an earthier, more grounded, less pretentious nature. She's dressed down, in jeans and a t-shirt, and has a vaguely sloe-eyed, almost elfin appeal, accentuated by pronounced cheekbones framed in a tangle of blond curls.
1. "I probably am just insane."
Bikini: Okay. You've got this successful TV show, which keeps you busy. And now you're doing these movies. Your schedule must be insane. What keeps you working when you don't necessarily have to?
Michelle Williams: I love it. And being on a successful TV show has allowed the opportunities for other work to present itself. Nothing makes me happier than passing at the end of the day just completely exhausted and drained and having to wake up in three hours. I just love working. I wouldn't know what to do with myself with down time. I would just go mad, and I did for years before Dawson's came on. Huge dry spells. Really, really bad times where I didn't work. And it drove me to really bad, self-destructive behavior, because I was so angry and so frustrated.
Bikini: How did you fill your days if you didn't work?
MW: I was just miserable. I would just wallow in that state and lie around the house and just mope. And go out at night until all hours and do crazy, stupid things to fill up time and to fill that void, because I wasn't working.
Bikini: That seems reasonable.
MW: I probably am just insane.
Bikini: I don't even know what that means. Well, I guess it's good that you're working then.
MW: It is. Because otherwise I'd be a drug-addicted streetwalker.
2. "It was pure fun."
Bikini: Tell me about H2O.
MW: It was awesome. It was pure fun. The director was great, and Jamie [Lee Curtis] is ... amazing. I had no idea what to expect going into it, and she exceeded everything I could ever have imagined. She's phenomenal. Words don't do her justice.
Bikini: Are you allowed to talked about the plot at all?
MW: Yeah, kind of. I don't want to give away the ending. Basically it's just 20 years later, and you see Jamie's character, what she's gone through over the past 20 years, and how all this crazy chaos has affected her. And then ... he [Michael Myers, not related to the star of Austin Powers] comes back. I play her son's girlfriend. The girl. My character was sort of modeled after Jamie's character in the original Halloween. Then comes the chase, and the killer, and you see what it makes her in the end.
Bikini: Lots of screaming involved, I imagine.
MW: Yeah. I've perfected the art.
Bikini: Was that fun, to sort of let loose like that? I don't think I've ever screamed in terror in my life.
MW: I've never screamed in terror before, but I've screamed in frustration. Like after two hours on the freeway. Anybody who's lived in Los Angeles has screamed on the freeway at one point or another. And it really is a tension releaser. You're completely drained of anything after emitting a few loud howls.
Bikini: What was the extent of Kevin Williamson's involvement?
MW: Somebody wrote the original, and when I went in for the meeting Kevin wasn't involved with it, we just had this original script. We sent him flowers and chocolates and coerced him.
Bikini: Does it have his trademark pop culture references?
MW: It's got a few of those, but it doesn't have that sort of tragically hip syndrome. It'll still maintain that Halloween ... you know, it was like the first real horror film. It has a lot of that class.
Bikini: Had you seen the original?
MW: No, I hadn't. I've seen it subsequently, but...
Bikini: Had you done any sort of horror type things previous to this?
MW: I did a sci-fi movie [Species, where she played Natasha Henstridge's younger self], I don't know if that really quite fits into the horror genre.
Bikini: What sort of mindset do you have to get into in order to act scared?
MW: It's not all that hard when it's like three in the morning and it's pitch black, and you can't see what's in front of you and you're running and this thing's chasing you with a knife. It's not all that difficult. It really is conducive to giving a good performance, because at the time, you're genuinely scared, and you really work yourself up and sort of get into that state of mind and it just carries through. It's hard to leave at the end of the day. I always lock my doors at night, now.
3."I was living alone in a huge city...."
Bikini: So you moved to L.A. from San Diego at 14, 15. By yourself.
MW: Yeah, I was crazy. I was living alone in a huge city and didn't really have a strong sense of myself or who I was, I just sort of knew that I wanted to act. And I didn't know exactly how to go about it.
Bikini: You must of have had unusually understanding parents to let you move up here. I guess it's only two hours up the road, but that might as well be....
MW: Yeah, it's lifetimes away. My dad and I are really really similar, and he sort of saw in me who he was as a kid. I had a real need for independence, I wanted to be on my own, and I wanted to make it and prove myself on my own, and I just didn't want them around anymore; it's a terrible thing to say, because I have the most amazing parents. And I'm so lucky that they ... my mom had a lot of reservations, obviously, she's a mom, but I'm lucky that my father was willing to let me sort of fall flat on my face with no means of escape. I mean, I had to learn that lesson, and I'm glad that I learned it really, really young, because from that point I can only progress. I hope.
Bikini: He must be pretty happy with the way things turned out so far.
MW: Yeah, I think so.
Bikini:You were born where?
MW: Montana
Bikini: Kind of cold.
MW: Yeah, real kind of cold, all kinds of cold.
Bikini: So you were probably pretty happy with the move to San Diego.
MW: I don't really remember my feelings on the move. I think I was....
Bikini: You were just a kid, it's like, "Okay, we're moving." What do you think of San Diego?
MW: I guess I was like 8 or 9, it was a hard sort of growing up period, junior high, first year of High School, that's what I sort of associate with San Diego. So it's kind of negative in a sense. I'm not damning the city itself. It's sort of like a half-assed, in-between city. It's not quite a small town, but it's not really a big city, it's just sort of there.
Bikini: Did you go down to Mexico at all?
MW: The cool kids did in High School. I never made the Tijuana trips, although I heard about them.
Bikini: So you weren't one of the cool kids.
MW: Not that I remember.
Bikini: You're on a show that purports to be set in a high school environment. How realistic do you find that?
MW: In some situations it really does remind me of high school, with the whole sweaty palms and locker combinations, but my character has a different social standing than I did. So I sort of get to live vicariously....
Bikini: The characters strike me as weirdly mature, mostly in the articulateness of their speech. In my experience, you can hardly get most high school kids to say three words.
MW: I think the show presents what teenagers wish that they had the ability to say in those kinds of situations. But I think that it's great because it sort of provokes intelligent thought, hopefully. I've been criticized for speaking with too much eloquence, but it's fabulous.
Bikini: Obviously it's striking a responsive chord, whether it's because they identify with the characters or situations, or because they aspire to the situations or characters.
MW: Exactly. I think that's been our goal from the very beginning. That's like the one sort of artistic license that we take with the show: speaking like 30 year olds.
Bikini: Well, it's written by a 30 year old.
MW: That's what kind of separates us from the pack.
4. "We realized we didn't know anything about brothels."
Bikini: I understand you've written a screenplay.
MW: I wrote it with two friends of mine. It came about right after Dawson's Creek wrapped up in December, and I came back home in January, and there was that down time again. And I started to get really antsy. My friend Amy came to my friend Megan and I, and said, "Look I've got this idea," and it's been far and away the most amazing thing I've ever participated in. I don't know if I have the words to describe the experience, but to have something that just moves you and drives you and keeps you awake at night because your mind is constantly on, and you can't allow yourself to sleep, because what if something strikes you at four in the morning.... Just being hooked to my computer and working on this with my two best friends. Chain smoking like fiends and ranting and raving, getting into fights over it, and being passionate about something. I'm probably making a complete and utter mess of my words just because it's been a really emotional experience.
Bikini: So what is it about, if you don't mind my asking?
MW: Not at all. It's about these three girls -- of course, it's completely self-serving, I mean we wrote it for ourselves. We wrote the kind of roles that we all want to play, but the opportunity doesn't always arise, so we decided to create it for ourselves. It takes place in Nevada in this brothel (laughs) -- so one night Megan and I were working and Amy was away in Chicago and we were working on the script and we realized we didn't know anything about brothels. I mean we really didn't know the day to day routine. We decided that night to drive to Las Vegas and find the brothels. So we hopped in the car and drove to Vegas that night, because all the brothels are actually outside of Vegas...
Bikini: Right, right.
MW: You seem sort of familiar with the subject.
Bikini: I know it's not legal in the city of Las Vegas, but outside the city....
MW: That's right!
Bikini: But I've just been told that by people. People I don't like.
MW: Bad, bad people. They're not friends of yours. No, I understand. So, we didn't know how to get to the brothels, we were just sort of like, "What the hell are we gonna do?" And we found this magazine on the street that was advertising all these ... you know, girls come to your room ... and then they had an advertisement on the back for a brothel, so we drove like 80 miles outside the city, and the first town that we came across had three brothels. It was the scariest sight I've ever seen. There were probably 30 people living in the town and most of them work in the brothel; one of them owns the bar, one of them owns the restaurant. So we went to the bar, and we started asking the bartender, you know, "What can you tell us?" and sort of trying to get some information and like being really friendly with him, and he wouldn't say anything. He was just completely like "No, I'm gonna get driven out of town if I open my mouth." So we had to figure out how to get this guy to talk. And then this woman walks in and he's like, "Well, maybe she can talk to you. She's the hostess of the brothel," and she wouldn't say anything either.
So we bought her a beer, and she started drinking and we were asking her about her life, and not too much about the brothel, and just sort of trying to get to know her first, you know, ease our way into it, and she was telling us that her dad used to be a truck driver and all the good times they had together on the road. And so I was like, "You know, my daddy was a truck driver, too, and some of the best memories that I have are sittin' in that cab going cross country," and she got really into it, really excited and telling us all these things, and....
Bikini: Is that true? About your dad being a truck driver?
MW: No, my dad is a commodities trader. But it sure opened her up.
Bikini: This is where the acting comes in.
MW: Exactly. This is what I've been training for all my life. And she's like, "I'd love to tell you more, but I can't lose my job and get in trouble, but there's this woman down the street who just got fired, and I think that she'd really be willing to tell you guys." So we go down to this house, and it's frightening. Gun racks and mangy dogs and pickup trucks and the whole nine yards, and Megan was like, "I'm not going in, we cannot go in there, she's gonna kill us," and so I ended up going in by myself. Amy had just watched this thing on Maury Povich about brothels, and the woman who answered the door was the woman on Maury Povich. And she was incredibly warm, and invited us in and talked and talked and we got everything that we needed. Looking back on it, we were insane -- going into this town and probing into these people's lives. But we had to do it. The screenplay would have been so false and so contrived if we hadn't. I think it was just about the coolest thing I've ever done.
bikini
september 1998
