ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does one get summoned to be in a Spielberg movie?
I’m guessing it must be a little bit surreal.
But they of course were also so well known and documented.
Emily Soto for EW
How much was Steven looking for a total embodiment of his mother versus forging your own path with it?
Otherwise, why make it?
It’s already been made.
(From L-R): Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera, Michelle Williams, and Gabriel LaBelle in ‘The Fabelmans.'.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
So it’s as close as it can be, but it also isn’t a documentary.
And I think that’s what the great things make us feel.
They put all of the archives onto an iPad for me, and that just became my companion.
Michelle Williams.Emily Soto for EW
And for every movie that I do, I always keep a notebook.
It’s the same notebook, and every woman gets a new one.
Binders full of women!
Michelle Williams in ‘The Fabelmans’.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
Did you see all that on the page right away?
It’s a feast, and they laid this table for her.
“My father and his technical prowess made me an artist, my mother and her creative liberty.”
Michelle Williams.Emily Soto for EW
And those two things can actually go hand in hand.
Because her heart is in the right place, and her heart can be in multiple places.
You definitely break the classic rule about never working with dogs and children here.
Michelle Williams.Emily Soto for EW
There are kids all over the place, and even a monkey.
I love that monkey, she’s amazing.
Oh, he was fine.
He didn’t need it.
There’s this announcer who’s obsessed with him.
You have to watch him just to increase the joy in your life.
Gabriel is so confident, he really trusts himself.
So the kid’s all right.
Do you have strong feelings about the category stuff, and where they might put you forFabelmans?
And so I didn’t have an assumption.
Or my assumption about it never changed.
You say “I’m told.”
Does that mean you haven’t seen the movie?
[Laughs] I’m incapable of watching my own work.
Was there maybe a little Verdon in there, too?
I’m like a potato bug.
So it takes a lot of work for me to find the air.
That seems like a lot to inhabit with your one small body within the space of a few years.
It’s amazing because we all do it.
That’s how every human gets here, is a woman giving of herself.
[Babies] have to arrive, and they have to be sustained, all of it.
So I’m continuously searching, because balance isn’t a stable place.
Balance means that you’re always adjusting.
My heart obviously belongs to my children; they tug at it the most.
But I really want to be able to have both.
[Laughs]That’s a big one for me.
Do you feel like you have a “one for them, one for me” mentality?
Yeah, I really do.
I love making movies for children now that I’m back in the little-kid years.
They’re all different worlds, and figuring out how to populate each of them is a fun challenge.
And I appreciate that now.
I like moving through uncomfortable places and coming out the other side of them.
You’re also known, fairly or not, for taking on uniquely heavy roles.
I think that having kids is really great for that.
I’m not going to go take something home and pollute my kids’ experience.
It’s something that moves through me and then it moves out of me.
Ultimately, this work is a joy.
What’s difficult is living up to your standard for yourself, your own ideal.
Are you surprised which projects have most endured with fans?
It seems like it’s pretty muchDawson’s Creek,Showman,Wendy and Lucy.
And I understand them because they’re so representative of a moment, and I feel very warmly.
I was pregnant at the time, and very nervous.
I wrote both of those speeches and I couldn’t be dissuaded from giving either of them.
[Laughs] But I felt equally called to both of them.
I just have something I cannot give up on.
I don’t know exactly why I’m there, but I know I have to be there.
I know, we were so close.
And I love working with people when it feels like family.
And I definitely have that family feeling with Todd.
So I was so disappointed when it fell apart, oh my God.
If not Peggy, then what’s next?
A whole bunch of nothing!
I didn’t think I had any work a year and a half ago either.
And then my phone lit up, and there was Steven Spielberg at the end of it.
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