From the moment Allison Williams first came across our screens, as art curator Marnie Michaels, the Type-A know-it-all BFF of Hannah Horvath (played by Lena Dunham) in Girls, there were expectations. That’s because when Williams was introduced to the world in 2012, she wasn’t necessarily a fresh-faced, nameless ingenue scrambling to get her start. Her name came with some strings attached—and a legacy to match. Williams’ father is Brian Williams, a former NBC Nightly News anchor and someone who viewers—by virtue of having him in their homes night after night—felt like they knew intimately. While having a famous father came with perks (a privilege Williams has always acknowledged), it also came with a lot of unspoken expectations, from herself and others, that she protect his reputation with her career choices.

Throw in the fact that Williams, alongside Girls co-stars Lena Dunham, Zosia Mamet and Jemima Kirk spent much of the series’ run being painted as perfect doppelgangers of their characters IRL—meaning Williams was assumed to be a perfectionist, spoiled princess, and the kind of person that would horrifically sing “Stronger” at their exe’s work party—there wasn’t much room for Williams’ own identity to form or shine through. (Williams, for her part, strongly denies being the type of person who would take over the mic to serenade an ex— because…the horror). 

It’s pretty unfair, not to mention a reality that impacted the career choices Williams made.

“It is the transition of individuation, in which you go from being someone’s child to being your own person. I think for multiple reasons, I didn’t go through that process until later. I felt like someone’s daughter for a longer time than a lot of people do,” Williams tells S Magazine.

While Williams was happy to stay her parents’ daughter in the public eye for much longer than normal, she says, “at a certain point, you do have to step into your own identity and into your own adulthood. And in that process of figuring out, who am I? What do I want? What kind of life do I want since I’m the one that has to live it? You learn a lot about yourself and then if you’re really lucky, that brings you even closer to your parents in a new way from a new point of view. But that stage can be kind of scary when you’re like: Okay, I have to go figure out who I am on my own.”

For Williams, who she is—at least when it comes to her career—is kind of a horror queen. Since Girls went off the air in 2017, Williams has gone on to carve out a niche in the genre; making her mark as the girl-next-door-turned-surprised-psycho in Jordan Peele’s genre-defining 2017 film Get Out before going on to star in quirkier and more unexpected horror movies, including 2018’s The Perfection, and the recent megahit M3GAN. But, just who Allison Williams is, is still evolving. Her latest film, Regretting You, which was released in theatres earlier this year, marks a departure for the actress into the world of #BookTok and romantic dramas. In the movie, adapted from author Colleen Hoover’s 2019 novel of the same name and starring Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood and McKenna Grace, Williams plays Morgan Grant, a young mom who — after the death of her husband and sister — begins a quest to find herself again, as she reconnects with her teenage daughter and a lost love. Williams is also an Executive Producer on the film, adding to her growing list of EP credits. And in June of this year, Williams, alongside childhood friends, launched Landlines, a podcast exploring the messy, nuanced and very real realities of motherhood. (Williams is mom to her son Arlo, born in 2021).

She’s still evolving, and as she does so has the way people have looked at her early work—and their early interpretations of her, because of it. The last few years have seen a resurgence in popularity around Girls as Gen Z viewers have discovered the show and millennials—now with the beauty of distance from their 20s and the period of time represented on-screen—have returned to it. And, they’re finding the antics of Marnie Michaels and Co. to be pretty darn relatable. Which isn’t that surprising, because a) it’s a truly incredible series and b) in the time between 2017 and now, there’s been an overall change in how we as a society view women in their 20s. As in we’re giving them a lot more grace.

“I do feel like when [Girls] came out, maybe for the people that were the same age as the characters, it was too close,” Williams agrees. “It was just too much too close; I need some perspective. I need some distance from this before I can actually see it clearly.”

Now, with some removal from the situation, not to mention the need to escape from the current political climate we’re in via our old pop culture faves, what once seemed like a too-close reflection on-screen now feels like an accurate, and not-too-confronting, representation of a time many of us are past—at least in theory, because as the women of Sex and the City have revealed, your 30s can be just as messy.

“Your 20s, it’s tricky,” Williams says. “It’s this decade now that’s sort of wishy-washy… For my friends, the 20s are about where do you want to live? Who do you want to marry? What job do you want to have? Flail around for about eight years of financial stress and see where it spits you out at the end. So I think the nostalgia comes doen the fact that it’s a very different country now than it was then, and maybe it feels a little bit less close to home to watch us figure it out on Girls these days.” 

And now, she’s ready to focus on yet another aspect of her identity—that of being a mom. “I honestly have the career that I dreamed of having when I was a little girl, and I feel really lucky that I get to merge that identity with mom.” Williams says. “I have this source of just pure joy and occasional frustration, but mostly joy and obsession in the form of our son. And our life at home is so happy that the bar for taking me away from that just gets higher and higher and higher.”

“I’ve always felt really lucky, but I haven’t always felt as at peace with what life looks like as I do in this moment, which I feel really lucky to be able to say.”

Regretting You is available to buy or rent on Apple TV+ and Prime Video.

Feature image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.