Allison Williams Channeled Elements Of Her Girls Character For Jordan Peele's Get Out
Lena Dunham's "Girls" is the kind of show you either really love or really hate. Meant to capture a specific moment in time, the HBO-produced series follows a group of four young millennial women living in New York City as they try to navigate the trials and tribulations of adulthood. What sounds like a fairly average premise actually became a culture phenomenon thanks to Dunham's so-insufferable-that-she's-maybe-lovable character Hannah Horvath and her group of equally lost and disenfranchised friends. Along with Dunham in the lead role, the show stars Adam Driver (before he became a Hollywood staple) as Hannah's on-again-off-again, definitely abusive boyfriend, and Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and Allison Williams as Hannah's friends.
On the show, Williams plays Hannah's best friend Marnie Michaels. Out of the two of them, Marnie is the one who seemingly has her life together, but as the series unfolds, it's clear that Marnie is just as adrift as the rest of them. Her opinionated and controlling behavior often give way to a deep need to appear as the considerate, put-together friend in the group. However, her eagerness to help is often tinged with her own narcissism. When she eventually marries her music partner Desi Haperin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach before the Italian beef shop), she's finally forced to reckon with her own demons.
Since "Girls," Williams has appeared in a handful of horror films ("M3GAN" fans, unite!), the most notable being Jordan Peele's 2017 "Get Out" in which she played the manipulative (I.E. racist) Rose Armitage. On the surface, Williams' characters in these two projects seemingly have nothing in common, but if you take a closer look, Marnie and Rose are actually a lot alike. In fact, Williams has stated that her part on "Girls" really helped in developing her character in "Get Out."
Two of a kind
Marnie Michaels is the perfect example of a privileged, young white woman who lacks the self-awareness needed to understand when it is and is not appropriate to offer her opinion. Throughout "Girls," she constantly attempts to mother her friends, however, her need to always be right often casts her in a comical, cringey light. If "Girls" were to air today, Marnie would definitely be the highly woke white woman with a bad habit of virtue-signaling online without ever really doing anything to create positive change.
Many of Marnie's traits are similar to Rose Armitage in "Get Out." Like Marnie, Rose operates under a false veneer of self-awareness, reassuring her boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) that her family will not care that he's Black. However, as fans of the film know, Rose is actually pretty racist (to a terrifying degree), helping her parents capture and enslave Black people through manipulation and mind control.
In a recent interview for The Guardian, Williams talked about how she channeled parts of her "Girls" character for her role in "Get Out." After explaining how many people thought Williams was actually like Marnie in real life, she says, "I learned that this element of Marnie-ness that I was having so much trouble shaking was something that I could actually use and weaponise and have fun with." So she took that "Marnie-ness" and used it to develop Rose. "It was so cathartic after years of people being like, that's who you are, that's who you are, that's who you are, I was like OK, you know who else that is? That could also be the most evil person that's ever lived," she says.
On the surface, "Girls" may not be a horror show, but its narcissistic characters certainly make for great horror inspiration.