Allison Williams

Allison Williams often looks entirely comfortable playing a woman who expects to be taken seriously. The polish and privilege are useful, especially when she leaves us to decide how much confidence to place in them. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), her casting as Rose Armitage draws on precisely those assumptions about a wholesome appearance. We value her restraint here, in a film with plenty of opportunities for actors to push too hard.

That familiarity began with Marnie Michaels in Lena Dunham’s Girls (2012–2017), her first major role. Ensemble comedy-drama established her before Get Out became her feature debut and wider breakthrough. The move into horror makes sense for an actor so often cast as a polished, privileged woman. Such a person arrives with expectations that a director can use without much explanation. It also makes it harder to separate what Williams is doing from what a director has hired her to represent.

We were frightened by the racial discomfort in Get Out, because Peele makes awkward encounters feel dangerous without losing the jokes. Daniel Kaluuya gives those encounters their weight; Williams’s apparently wholesome presence is another part of the casting that Peele has thought through. He understands that audiences bring expectations to a seemingly innocent white woman before she has done anything to earn them. A few supporting performances are too broad, but this is a film we recommend well beyond horror’s usual audience.

The Perfection (2018) continued the move into horror, and M3GAN (2022) made her both its star and an executive producer. As Gemma in the latter, she plays the absurd premise straight, which helps the comedy as much as the horror. There is pleasure in an actor who does not keep reminding us that she understands the joke. We would still like to see fewer roles relying on the same polished exterior. Begin with Get Out, and pay attention to what Peele gains by casting her.