- I think it's a connection between you and the material
and I think it happens the first time that you read it
and I think it sort of comes off the page
and you can hear it like a piece of music.
It sort of starts to play itself in front of you.
[bright jazzy music]
Hi, I'm Michelle Williams,
and this is the timeline of my career.
- Put a blanket over it tonight
'cause it probably gets pretty cold in here.
I'll bring you some extra formula tomorrow.
- Okay.
- I remember just being really excited.
I went on a lot of auditions as a kid
and so to get something
that wasn't an infomercial was a really big deal.
I remember multiple Lassies and I remember being,
I was like, ah, that's movie making for you,
multiple Lassies, now I know how things work.
There's a stuffed Lassie, there's a stunt Lassie,
there's a not as handsome Lassie,
and then there's like a Lassie
that's saved for the closeup.
- Hi, I'm Paisey. Nice to meet you.
- Hi, I'm Dawson. - You're Dawson?
Dawson. Yeah, I know, we met before.
I'm Jen.
- Oh, the granddaughter from New York. Okay.
- Right, right.
- [Dawson] Wow, you look different.
- Puberty. Hi, I'm Joey.
I lived down the creek and we've never met ever.
- It was exciting.
We got picked up.
Like it was such a big deal.
You shoot a pilot for something and
you don't know what's gonna happen or
if you'll all be together again or,
and then it turns out we ran for six and a half years.
It's how much we responded to it
and it was totally a thrill.
[gentle music]
- I should go, but thanks for everything, Dawson.
- But um...
- I'm just gonna pretend we kissed, okay?
- I mean I always took it very seriously,
maybe a little bit too seriously.
I think they thought we were kind of
like annoying kids because I was like
I have a note or I don't want her to do that
or I don't want her to say that.
But I think I was learning how to have a voice
and I felt very connected to the character
because I played it for so long,
and I think I was so young when I played that part
and my identity was still sort of forming and so
we were kind of meshing
with each other and so I took it very personally.
- And then you come back looking all perky
and said you caught a bunch of browns
and you ate them up.
Do you remember?
I looked in that case first chance I got
and there was my notes still tied there.
Their land hadn't touched water in its life.
- Didn't mean nothing.
- Don't try and fool me no more, Ennis.
I know what that means.
- My experience maybe is that the perception
that the film could change was
for men to see themselves in love with each other.
That that was a perception,
that that love I think offered a kind
of self-love that hadn't been given
to them in cinema before.
That was the experience that I had,
that people were so grateful to see themselves in this way.
I think that what the two boys did
was at the time incredibly brave.
And maybe even now still would be considered brave.
I don't know.
But I know that that wasn't really on my shoulders.
It's like in the way that it was on theirs.
It's one of those roles that you dream of.
But I never could have anticipated
what sort of impact it would have.
I just wanted to play it so badly.
- Hey Lou.
Hey. Hey Lou.
Do you miss me? Huh?
- I do like to work with dogs. [crew laughs]
I like to work with an animal.
My favorite animal now is the monkey though.
Man, what an actor.
I don't think I really felt any pressure
in making "Wendy and Lucy"
because nobody cared that we were making "Wendy and Lucy".
It was a six person crew.
But it was precisely like the arrow
on the target of the kind of work that I wanted to be doing,
the kind of work that I had always wanted to do.
And then here I was, even though nobody cared about it.
I was familiar with Kelly's work.
I had seen her other films,
which is why I wanted to make "Wendy and Lucy".
But then all of a sudden people saw it
and it's still maybe the movie that when people come
up to me and they say that they love "Wendy and Lucy",
it has a really special place in my heart
because you don't really make a movie
like that thinking really anybody's gonna see it.
You're really just kind of doing it for yourself.
And it really, I think,
announced Kelly as the filmmaker that she is.
And now we just had a movie at Cannes together
and she has a cinema dedicated to her at the Sorbonne.
She's the only woman to have that honor.
So you know that
that's where it all started as very meaningful to me.
- You're hungry, huh?
Bet you are. Come on, let's go.
- When I was on "Dawson's Creek",
it was such a great time for me
because we lived in North Carolina, small sleepy town,
and there was a record store, a DVD store,
and a Barnes & Noble.
And I didn't go to college
and I didn't really go to high school.
And those three places gave me my education.
And what I was seeing was independent cinema.
And I thought, "oh, I'd really like to work there.
I'd really like to be in that community.
I'd like to be one of them".
And so "Wendy and Lucy",
a number of years had passed
between first having that desire
and then finding myself there.
And so I was like, "oh, here I am,
this is what I wanted and what I was aiming towards,
and here I am".
- I can't do this. I can't take this shit.
- [Dean] Come outside - Dean,
I cannot take this shit anymore.
I cannot take this shit.
- [Dean] Just come outside.
- I am not going outside with you. I've had it.
I've had it. - [Dean] Come and talk.
- I have had it. I am up to here.
I'm done, okay? I'm done.
- [Dean] Let's go outside. - I'm done.
- I really hungered for this one, "Blue Valentine".
There was a time in my life where just everything
was "Blue Valentine".
I had read the script and I was totally obsessed with it.
And it was like a fire inside of myself.
And everything that I saw, everything that I listened to,
it was all just sort of like through this lens
of "Blue Valentine".
And then we just hung onto it for a really long time.
I hung onto it,
Ryan hung onto it, Derek hung onto it.
And then finally we actually got to make it.
And it had been living inside of all of us.
When I think back about that time
when I read the script and in that sort of interim period
before we made it,
that period in your life where
you really know what you wanna be doing,
but you aren't doing it and it burns.
And that burning is so generative
when you can't possess something
and you just have to live in desire,
that's what I think about when I think about
the "Blue Valentine" years.
I was just like burning with desire for this expression.
- You're caring me. - Don't say it.
Don't say that stuff.
Be a man, what is that shit?
- I mean, don't bully. - I'll be a man.
You want me to be a man? Here you go.
[Dean slamming objects]
- Stop it, get out. - I'm a big man. Look at me.
- Derek would set up these rehearsals
for us where he would say, okay,
now I want you to make a family budget,
and now I want you to get into a fight,
and now I want you to try and fix the kitchen sink.
And now I want you to take your daughter
to the playground and now I want you to try taking her
to the playground after you've had a fight.
And so we had an entire night that we improvised,
we had like a a 12 hour dusk till dawn
that we shot on these streets upstate New York
that was all improvised and sort of told Ryan
and I to just kind of like stuff our pockets
with things we might wanna come up with, but we had no plan.
And then all of a sudden,
we wound up doing each other's makeup and tap dancing
and that kind of deep immersive rehearsal
experience gets a little bit more difficult
when you have more children to make that kind of time.
- My heart was broken.
It's always gonna be broken,
but I know yours is broken too.
- When I think back about "Manchester" and I think about
some of those scenes that we filmed,
I remember saying to Kenny,
I remember both of us saying to each other
"I don't wanna do this,
I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do this scene,
I don't wanna play this day,
but I do know that I get to go home".
And I know that for people who have lived through this,
they never get to go home.
And so whatever I think I'm afraid of on that day
has no comparison to
what people have lived through.
And I didn't wanna feel sorry for myself.
[woman screaming incoherently]
[radio chatter]
[dramatic music]
That day, that night after the fire was kind of a blur.
It's just sort of like one big emotional blur.
Kenny is right there with you
and his scripts are so beautiful
and so poetic and they look very simple.
It's a lot of overlapping dialogue.
It's a lot of pauses, um, huh, yeah well, uh,
and the reason that they're so perfect.
And then when you see them, they kind of are transcendent,
like Kenny's lived through everything.
He's the reason that I know where to put
the uh or the mm is because I've said it out loud.
I've played each of these characters
by myself at home where I'm writing
and that's why I know where they go
because I've said it for them.
So there's this person
behind the monitor who is like walking your path with you.
And I don't know, I think I just remember
feeling that on all those really difficult days.
- This isn't the life I promised you.
- But I have everything I want.
- What about the magic?
- What do you call those two girls?
Hey partners, look who mozied into the corral.
- What are you-- - Daddy!
- It feels good.
Those songs come on the radio and I'm singing them.
I hear it in the grocery store and I wanna dance to it.
"The Greatest Showman", sequel, part two, come on.
♪ This is the greatest show ♪
♪ We won't come down ♪
♪ and the sun gets up on them now ♪
♪ Watching it come true, it's taking over you ♪
♪ This is the greatest show ♪
- That movie makes you feel good.
People love it. Kids love it.
Grownups love it. I love it, more please.
♪ Make up your mind to have. ♪
- They're not gonna let you do this, you know.
♪ No regrets ♪
- Who's they?
- George, the audience, critics,
you can't do a striptease on Broadway.
- You think it's vulgar?
- Gosh, TV hadchanged a lot
and everybody kept telling me it was different now
and that it was really a place where you would be
fully supported and people were making
really interesting work, and gosh,
I just totally found that to be true.
Like I loved working for this network,
I loved working for FX.
I loved the belief that they put in all of their artists.
They really gave us so much liberty and support
because when you're singing and you're dancing
and you're aging and you need a lot of help,
you really need the right things
and the right things cost money.
The right teeth costs money.
The right prosthetics costs money.
The right dance teacher costs money.
And that's how you are enabled to
go to another level with your work,
which is ultimately for them.
And they seem to understand that transaction.
So I found it a totally thrilling place to work.
I love the limited series form.
You get to embed yourself with this character
like you do in a play,
but you get to have new experiences with them.
So by the end of it you feel so close to them,
you don't really know where you begin and they end,
and you sort of go through a very awkward
transition phase as you're kind of letting them go.
It's kind of like growing out your hair
and you're just like, oh,
when am I gonna feel like myself again?
But I would love to do another limited series.
Having Nicole Fosse on set,
she offered things that nobody else could,
she'd sort of whisper in my ear,
oh my mom would add this word here.
These like really invaluable details.
And it's the same thing with Steven now I realize,
you kind of have these two experts
who are whispering into your ear.
That was great because I got to learn how to dance
or how I learned how to pretend to dance or I learned
that I can't dance.
Dancers are like superheroes,
they look like us and they walk around
and then they take their clothes off
and they are not of this earth.
I love their tenacity
and I love how dancers are in pain.
They're always in pain and they power
through it and they make it look so glorious,
and make you think that you can do it, but you can't.
But I just loved being in their world.
- Sammy, we're going to use daddy's camera to film it.
Only crash the train once, okay?
Then after we get the film developed,
you can watch it crash over
and over till it's not so scary anymore
and your real train will never get broken.
One more thing, Dolly,
let's not tell your father.
It'll be our secret movie, just yours and mine.
I didn't know why Steven wanted to talk to me.
I could not allow myself to think
that he wanted me to be in one of his movies.
I really thought he just wanted to ask me a question
about something that I couldn't even really imagine what
because it just didn't make any sense.
Like Steven Spielberg wants to talk to me?
He knows my name? What's happening?
So when we were on this Zoom together and he's talking
about his life and he's talking about his childhood
and then it sort of hits me what's going on.
And I can't even believe
that I had the nerve to ask him
if I understood correctly what I thought he was saying
because even that seems audacious to imagine
that he was in fact asking me to play his mother.
And he said "yes,
that is in fact what I'm asking you to do".
And I just am still shaking my head in disbelief.
I don't know,
I think the only way that I approached this role
differently is like the accumulation of years.
I was 41 when I made it.
And so I couldn't have made this when I was 39 or 22.
I couldn't have made this at any other point.
I wouldn't have been ready until I was 41.
So I brought 41 years to it.
We talked, he shared, open heart, open hands,
what a memory he has too.
He carries all of this richness
with him and then he just sort of like lays it
at your feet and you get
to sift through it and find what's most useful
and then take it to work with you,
and then what you're bringing makes something else
occur to him.
And then it's just like throwing a ball
back and forth and you're just kind of
watching the trajectory together
and then sort of seeing how much further you can go.
Gosh, I thought, you know,
when I finished reading the script,
I just thought it's a feast
and they let her live as a woman.
She was a girl,
she was a woman, and then she became a mother.
A mother is one part of her identity.
I also felt like they
didn't judge her for the choices that she made.
I felt like she was allowed to live
without punishment or apology.
And that really, the way that she lived her life,
is celebrated by the way that Steven has lived his life.
And all of her children have gone
on to live their own individual past
because they saw their mother do it first.
- You can't just love something,
you also have to take care of it.
It's more important than your hobby.
- Can you stop calling it a hobby?
- Mom got a monkey. [screams]
- [Father] Why'd you get a monkey?
- [Mother] Because I needed a laugh.
That monkey was so impressive.
I was like, I wanna go to monkey acting school.
There is nothing she can't do.
And just pure presence,
like you really gotta be careful
or that monkey's gonna upstage you.
All animals can upstage you.
They can't not be in the moment.
And that monkey taught my toddler how to give a high five,
which was the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.
I'll tell you what's not better is a pigeon.
Not my favorite scene partner.
[bright music]
I really don't know what's coming next.
And it's sort of exciting to think
that anything can happen just the way that it always does.
Everything, every job that you get,
you can't really see it coming.
And then you meet it
and it meets you and you sort of understand, oh this is...
I kind of think you get the right job
for the right moment or you say yes
to the thing that you kind of unconsciously wanna work on
in yourself or find some kind of expansion in.
So I feel excited right now to not know what's coming
and to not know what the thing is
that I'm gonna be trying to expand or figure out.