Allison Williams is staying booked and blessed. Since the end of the SAG strike, she’s spent a good amount of time promoting the limited series “Fellow Travelers” opposite Matt Boomer and Jonathan Bailey. She’s also producing and reprising her role as Gemma in “M3GAN 2.0,” the sequel to the smash 2023 thriller. And, at the end of the year, she’ll film the independently financed murder mystery “Kill Me” opposite Charlie Day. But when we jumped on a Zoom early last month, the “Girls” alumni was focused on “Travelers,” a Showtime and Paramount+ production that has fostered a very loyal fan base.
Spanning four decades, “Travelers” centers on a secret love affair between “Hawk” Fuller (Boomer) and Tim Laughlin (Bailey) that begins when they cross paths during the McCarthy Era in Washington, D.C. Intertwined in this complicated romance is Lucy Smith (Williams), the woman Hawk marries and starts a family with. The role found Williams in a plethora of different hairstyles and wardrobes from 1950 to the late 1980s. It also saw Lucy change in a multitude of ways as the world transformed around her. She did have a favorite “era” of Lucy, however.
“I was obsessed with sixties Lucy,” Williams says. “I mean, especially at that party, she gets a little too drunk. She’s feeling herself, she gets a little sloppy. She has a little makeout. I just really loved that version of her. The sort of I-D-G-A-F, Lucy. I think that’s what the kids say. They wouldn’t say it. They’re so much cooler. [Laughs.] I really, really liked that Lucy because she was so obsessed with decorum. In every other moment, we see her in the show, she’s keeping it all together. She’s presenting as complete a thought as she possibly can, as perfect an image as she can. And it’s so nice to just see her it a little bit free. So, I loved playing that, and I loved the feeling of making Hawk a little jealous of her. I think that would’ve felt really good because what kind of jealousy is that? That’s so fascinating.”
During our interview, Williams reflects on her desire to work with her good friend Boomer, the difficulty of jumping between three or four different decades (sometimes in the context of one episode), what Lucy would think of those steamy sex scenes between Hawk and Tim that will make even the most liberal viewer blush, an update on “M3GAN 2.0,” and why “Kill Day” is the sort of project she’s gravitating to these days.
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The Playlist: What made you want to say “yes” to “Fellow Travelers”?
Allison Williams: Kind of everything about it? To be honest, it wasn’t a hard decision. I just really hoped that they wanted me to play Lucy. The script, the description of the people involved in making it, the story, the subject matter, the character of Lucy getting to work with Matt, who I’ve known for a really long time, finally get so close to being the object of his desire to get that. We’ll have to work together one more time in order for me to really get that bucket list checked off, but again, literally everything about it. It was a very simple thing to assess in terms of whether or not I wanted to do it.
When you got on board, did you have all the scripts ahead of time? Did you know the structure of the show?
Yeah, I knew the structure. I think I had the first six scripts and maybe outlines of the seventh and eighth, and then there were iterations of each script. But for the most part, everything kind of stayed consistent, which was dreamy because it’s a lot to prepare in terms of timeline and jumping around through time chronologically in the show, and also filling in the gaps of her story that we don’t get to see on screen. But it was nice to have the full picture of the story we were telling from the beginning. That’s always really helpful and is not often a privilege that you have, especially in television. And the scripts were just gorgeous. I mean, Ron Nyswaner crafted this beautiful, beautiful story based on a beautiful book, but filling in a lot of details that you can’t really show in a book necessarily. I just felt very excited to tackle this challenge chronology and also really tricky, tough subject matter.
Well, that’s what I was curious about because correct me if I’m wrong, you cover five decades, forties, fifties, sixties…
The seventies, eighties. Four technically four.
And in some episodes, you are appear in three decades at once.
Yeah.
So were you guys shooting in blocks? Did you go to the other sets and back again?
Yeah, we shot blocks of episodes, but we did not shoot chronologically. So I think we shot episodes one and two or maybe it was one and three, and then two and four were combined. Either way, we weren’t able to shoot fully chronologically so it was kind of jumping around through time. And one of the things that the production team tried to do from the beginning was limit Matt’s time travel per episode because there’s a lot of time in and out of eras for him. But yeah, it was one of those really funny things where you started to hear people on set being like, “Oh my God, I’m loving the seventies. I don’t want to go back to the eighties or whatever.” The fifties are my aesthetic place. I definitely will say that the fifties has just a magic about it, aesthetically than the other decades, certainly once the shoulder pads started appearing in the eighties, everyone was like, “O.K., here we are. We knew this was coming sartorially, we knew this was coming.” But also each decade carries with itself a kind of weight of the history and of the context of the show. And so The Lavender Scare, the heaviness and fear of the fifties episodes eventually knowing that the AIDS crisis is coming in the latter episodes, kind of bookended this story. [It was] a very upsetting stew to be living in together.
Out of all the eras of Lucy, was there one that you found most interesting to play?
Sixties, I was obsessed with sixties, Lucy. I mean, especially at that party, she gets a little too drunk. She’s feeling herself, she gets a little sloppy. She has a little makeout. I just really loved that version of her. The sort of I-D-G-A-F, Lucy. I think that’s what the kids say. They wouldn’t say it. They’re so much cooler. [Laughs.] I really, really liked that Lucy because she was so obsessed with decorum. In every other moment we see her in the show, she’s keeping it all together. She’s presenting as complete a thought as she possibly can, as perfect an image as she can. And it’s so nice to just see her it a little bit free. So I loved playing that, and I loved the feeling of making Hawk a little jealous of her. I think that would’ve felt really good because what kind of jealousy is that? That’s so fascinating.
What’s interesting is that she seems like she’s the least repressed in that era. And then later on…
Yeah, she goes right back in.
Was that because of what happened to her son? Was that just the political era? How did you sort of justify the subtle change in her demeanor?
Yeah, I thought about that a lot. How there’s a sort of sliding doors version of Lucy where she just keeps leaves Hawk for that nice man and just starts a new life together. And she does something very scandalous short term that ultimately gives her so much joy and liberates her kind of. I think the loss of their son kind of created a contraction in her back to what’s comfortable, back to what she knows. Back to the country clubs, back to the decorum, back to the presentation. I can’t imagine a tragedy like that. I cannot imagine a loss like that. But when I tried, I could see her and Hawk going one of two ways, and Hawk went the other way. He spun out, he lost all his footing. He left his foundation, he left his mooring, he left his caution and carefulness and calculation and just went off on a risk-laden adventure to Fire Island, which is such a fabulous episode, so heartbreaking. And Lucy went the other way. She was like, “I’m going to the house. I’m going to design other people’s stick-up their ass living rooms. I’m going to put floral wallpaper all over this planet until I feel better about things.” And I think it was her way of feeling like the world still had some kind of order and meaning and logic in it. When something like that happens, which kind of proves that, what is this? And nothing matters, and it’s all a nightmare. I think that’s what she clung to.
Were you surprised that she let Hawk come back after his six-month departure?
We talked about that a lot. One of the things that Ron spoke to Matt and I about frequently was this notion of wanting to focus on the love and the shared experience that the two of them had. It’s very easy in this story to focus on lies and distrust and betrayal and estrangement. I feel like I’ve seen the version of this marriage, which is very estranged, and you do see glimpses of that in the show, but underlying it, one of the things that I tried to keep in the back of my mind, and I sort of wish we had had time in the show to see this, but I just know there were so many nights when the two of them would kick off their shoes in the front hall and they’d go flop onto a couch together and share a cigarette and eat popcorn or something. And just watch a show together and talk s**t about people and just be a couple and talk about their kids and their friends and gossip. And I love picturing that version of Hawk and Lucy, because that is where the intimacy is for them. That’s where the bond is. And so I think when he came back, the idea for her of having that back in her life and being able to mourn with the only person who can understand what she’s going through, would’ve been so powerful. Wanting to pull him close. I actually really understand that instinct. And I believe, and we discussed this, we think that the years after he returned until 1986 when the show starts, would’ve been the happiest years of their marriage, oddly. The most devastating personally because of their loss, but the most connected they’ve been the whole time. And I believe that. I think that’s totally possible. And then when that snow globe appears with Marcus at that party, Tim’s back. But then that’s it. The scene where she’s in the hotel room, she just, that’s it.
Where do you think she goes after that moment?
Italy.
Well, she tells him she doesn’t want to go to Italy, right? He’s going…
I think she does. He wanted to go to Italy. But I also think in my dreams of where she had her sexual awakenings in Europe, I think it was around Italy and France and maybe Greece. I think she really lived it up. But I think for her, going to Italy has a particular satisfaction to it of the, “Let’s see what the fuss is all about. And you told me we were going there. This is where we were supposed to be going. So I’m going to go, I’m going to start my life. I’m going to go get hit on by gorgeous Italian men while I have an espresso in Milan. This is happening.” I can totally see that for her. And I hope she met some wonderful guy who was deeply attracted to her and her Chanel suit.
Yes, her Chanel suit. [Laughs.] When you got the scripts was there any scene that you were most nervous about or concerned about filming?
Good question. There were so many. Mostly what I feel when I read certain scenes is like, “Oh, I really want to do this scene justice.” And this show really didn’t have a lot of fat. There weren’t a lot of scenes that felt interstitial or insignificant to me, which is I think the sign of a really tightly told story. But there is the scene with Hawk in the pilot when he’s deciding to leave when she’s helping him pack. I definitely wanted to get that right. I wanted to get the scenes right with her dad, with her daughter. The conversations with Tim for sure, especially when he shows up at the house, that whole episode in the sixties, I felt I really just wanted to nail because I felt like it was kind of our best chance of understanding Lucy as an audience. There were so many. I really wanted to nail them all because I also felt like she’s a little piece of a puzzle, but a really important one in understanding who Hawk is. And we loved him so much from the very moment we meet him and his adorable puppy self and his glasses, and he’s just the sweetest thing ever. And so I was like, “We need to understand why Hawk is even slightly pulled in another direction. And to what extent what that pull is. Is it a pull of circumstance in life and the times, or is it a pull of like, I really actually love this woman?” He’s a tough person to root for in the first place. But I wish he could have lived in a different time where he could have just been in love with the person he was in love with and live life and do it safely and joyfully, but given the time they lived in, I just wanted…I don’t know. I really wanted people to understand Lucy’s value to him, I guess.
What do you think Lucy would’ve thought of the sex scenes in the show?
Oh my gosh. What a great question. I want to think she would’ve been psyched to be like, “Oh, I want to get it. I want to see it and understand it and get it, see what’s been going on.” Sadly, I think she would’ve said, “I don’t need to see that.” That’s probably what would say. “I don’t need to see that.”
There was just a casting announcement today for the “M3GAN” sequel.
Yes, Ivanna Sakhno.
Are you leaving tomorrow? Are you getting on a plane? Are you about to shoot?
Very, very soon. We’re starting soon. I cannot wait. And Ivanna’s so talented. We’re really lucky to have her.
And are you going back to New Zealand to shoot it?
We are. We’re going back to the island. Yep. We’re going back to New Zealand to shoot it. Just keep that Kiwi sensibility in the stew of what makes M3GAN. What makes our girl our girl.
And out of curiosity, have they given you a script? Have you seen it?
Oh, yes. I’m producing this one so I have been across it from day minus whatever. And so I’m watching it come to be, and it’s a delight. I love this world so, so much. I’m so happy we get to make more.
You’re also making a movie with Charlie Day called “Kill Year.” Is that filming this year?
I think we’re aiming for the end of this year. Yes, it’s still kind of coming together, but I’m so excited about that. Charlie is one of the world’s funniest people, and the subject matter is very important to me. So I’m really excited to do it.
Is it a drama or…?
Wow, it is a tough genre to describe, but the minute it starts, you will understand what you’re going to be in. Peter Warren, the writer director, is supremely talented. And it, yeah, it’s sort of a mystery dramedy, kind of, but at its heart, it really deals with some very, very serious subjects. And so I think one of the things that I’ve loved about some of the things I’ve been in is taking really serious subjects that are hard to contend with and putting them in weird genre mashups so that it’s a little easier to talk about and contend with sometimes. And this will be definitely one of those projects. So, I cannot wait.
“Fellow Travelers” is available on Showtime on Paramount+
