Despite this being a show for teens, Michelle Williams said she always took it seriously. “Maybe a little too seriously,” she says in the video. Williams explains:
“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 just 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.”
It wasn’t an easy job, as she said in Variety’s Actors on Actors chat in 2019 (via People). She explained, “We did 22 episodes a year, you’d be getting scripts sort of at the last minute, and you had like zero input. That was hard; it was a little bit like a factory job. It was formulaic.” Input, as you can see, is important to Williams, who also said in the chat that she hadn’t done much on the small screen since. “I don’t think I’ve done television in between then and now because of a fear of loss of input.” However, she has appeared in an episode of “Cougar Town” (which her best friend Busy Philipps starred in), and the miniseries “Fosse/Verdon.”
Williams’ approach to acting has clearly paid off for her, winning her two Golden Globes, a Primetime Emmy, and was nominated for four Academy Awards and four BAFTA Awards. Her film “The Fablemans” is currently in theaters.