The name on everybody’s lips these days isM3GAN. And that dancing dollshould have your attention. (Be warned: spoilers for M3GAN follow.) The titular character from mega-producersJason Blum andJames Wan’s new venture into horror-comedy has hada vise grip on a specific corner of culture—let’s just say it, gay culture—for the past week, and for good reason. M3GAN’s mastery of the English language makes ChatGPT look like AIM’s SmarterChild. Her cover of “Titanium” blowsSia’s version out of the water. The precision of her eye work would impress legendary film acting coachBob Krakower.
But the best part ofthe very well-reviewedM3GAN is not actually M3GAN the doll. No,M3GAN’s secret weapon—the reason the film is as frightfully silly and devilishly campy and works in any capacity—is its very human lead,Allison Williams, who stars as toy inventor Gemma. Not only did Williams makeM3GANwith her stellar performance, she inadvertently invented an archetype entirely of her own while doing so. Introducing, The Allison.
The Allison™ is the polar opposite of the long since disgraced cliché Manic Pixie Dream Girl. MPDGs (Kirsten Dunst’sClaire ColburninElizabethtown,for whom the phrase was coined,Natalie Portman’s tap-dancing Sam inGarden State; andZooey Deschanel in, well,a lot of things) were easy, breezy, and beautiful female characters who delight, amaze, and inspire the (always) male protagonists without necessarily having complex inner lives of their own. On the contrary, The Allison is all too serious and neurotically intense. On top of that, she’s usually super-ambitious, pretty, meticulously styled, rather Type A, and often a bit of a perfectionist. She knows what she wants and has the wherewithal to go get it.
Credit where it’s due,Reese Witherspoon’s prickly overachieverTracy Flick inElection (1999) was an early inspiration for Allisons everywhere. Flick is hyperintelligent, ruthless, and dogged in her pursuit of her goal—to win student body president—often to her own detriment. All these traits coalesce to create the blueprint we’ve seen time and again in film and television,like Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf on the original Gossip Girl,and of course,Lea Michele’s Rachel Berry onGlee.Allisons, and their fictional foremothers, will sacrifice anything and anyone to get what they want.
InM3GAN,Williams’s Gemma is a total Allison. She’s a genius toy roboticist who becomes obsessed with creating an artificially intelligent doll that’s able to comfort, protect, and provide companionship to her recently orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), who has come into her care. Gemma means well, and her reasons for engineering a robot babysitter-slash-overlord (what could go wrong?) seem valid—she has a demanding job and an overbearing boss, and feels out of her depth taking care of a child with serious trauma. But as the film progresses, it’s clear that Gemma, accidentally or not, has designed a doll to take care of a traumatized child primarily so that she herself can get back to work.
Williams expertly and believably juggles the tricky humor and high stakes of the situation, nailing her punch lines and keeping the campy tone of the film aloft while never sacrificingthe emotional stakes necessary to drive the plot forward. Gemma’s clear frustration when Cady forgets to use a coaster is, at once, understandable yet funny. Sure, it’s annoying to get rings on your hardwood table, but hey, didn’t that nine-year-old girl just lose her parents in a horrific snowplow accident? Maybe let her off the hook?
And when Gemma delicately pressures her clearly suffering niece to perform in a make-or-break work presentation at her toy company (“I mean, there are people who flew across the country for it, but if you’re not up for it, I’d rather you tell me now”) it’s both an earnest request and a howl-worthy punch line. It’s a total Allison move that Williams pulls off perfectly.
None of this should come as a huge surprise if you’ve been paying attention to Williams’s career. She’s been delivering terrific Allison performances for over a decade now, ever since she power-walked onto the screen as Marnie Michaels, the high-intensity best friend to Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath on HBO’sGirlsin 2012.In an interview withGlamour during the height ofGirls, Williams revealed that Dunham told her that the character of Marnie was partlyinspired by Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick. (Glee’sRachel Berry was also inspired by Tracy Flick, by the way.) “Lena says ‘Tracy’ a lot when she’s directing me,” Williams said. “That’s Marnie’s thing.” Marnie’s thing is being a Flick acolyte—i.e., an Allison—albeit a messier version of one. And as for Williams’s mastery ofM3GAN’s tone, that also can be traced back toGirls.People incorrectly treatedGirls as if it were a documentary when it came out, but it was, inarguably, a horror-comedy, in which Williams excelled—I’m still hard-pressed to think of a scarier, more hilarious scene thanMarnie’s acoustic rendition of “Stronger.” Six seasons onGirls undoubtedly laid the groundwork for Williams to land the humor rife inM3GAN.
Even when the part doesn’t necessarily call for it, Williams’s acting can sometimes seem Allison-adjacent anyway. While she was definitely not to blame forthe myriad of problems with 2014’sPeter Pan Live!, some reviewers noticed a seriousness and an intensity inWilliam’s portrayal of the titular role that didn’t entirely fit the bill, especially considering Peter Pan’s whole thing is rambunctious, carefree youth, and the ability to take to the skies like, say, a manic pixie. “Williams had the grave air of a woman who would boldly wear a somewhat mannish haircut to achieve a childhood dream,” wroteSarah Larson in her review of Peter Pan Live!forThe New Yorker. “She seemed to be daring you to watch her perform. There was nothing playful about it. She had taken over that pirate ship, and now it was hers.” If that doesn’t sound like an Allison playing Peter Pan, then I don’t know what does.
But Williams seemed to have gotten the last laugh, leveraging those stretched-thin nerves to their greatest dramatic power. Oscar winnerJordan PeeletoldBusiness Insider that seeing Williams inGirls—and “the wonderful risk she took withPeter Pan”—inspired him to cast her asthe female lead in his directorial debut,Get Out:“She felt cosmopolitan but also undeniably Caucasian.”
While an Allison-esque character can obviously be any race—we salute you,Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang onGrey’s Anatomy, andKerry Washington as Olivia Pope inScandal—for many of these characters, whiteness is a crucial part of the formula. There’s often a through line between their perceived entitlement and their lack of self-awareness. Anyone who even cracked openRobin DiAngelo’sWhite Fragilityin 2020,or paid attention to conversations surrounding race and privilege in America the last few years, should be willing to stomach the notion that privilege is largely inextricable from whiteness.
Williams was able to weaponize her Caucasian-ness and her innate Allison-ness to deliver a crucial, highly calibrated performance in the now iconicGet Out. As the duplicitous Rose, Williams played a racist woman who knew exactly what she wanted, but this time, had to convincingly hide her nefarious intentions from her boyfriend,Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris, as well as the audience, until the cinematically perfect moment. As the tension builds and Kaluuya’s panic rises, Williams keeps up the act until the great reveal:“You know I can’t give you the keys, right, babe?” In that moment we discovered that Rose is, to borrow another hallmark of 2020, a “Karen”—a white woman who feels entitled to whatever she wants—even if that means her Black boyfriend’s life.
