Yahoo News Michelle Williams On Returning To Work With FX Series ‘Dying For Sex’ & Why Cinema Was Her “Teacher” As A Teenager — Red Sea Studio
Five-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams joined us at our Deadline Red Sea Film Festival studio this week to discuss regional change, the role cinema played in her education as an actress and her next project: FX limited series Dying For Sex, which we detailed yesterday.
The Fabelmans and Brokeback Mountain actress told us she was moved to come to the Saudi Arabian festival given the amount of societal change underway in the country and the event’s foregrounding of female creatives.
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“I was moved when I read about how quickly change has come to the region,” she said. “I was curious to see what the energy was like here and the people behind that change…A festival that is featuring 38 filmmakers, that’s not a token, that’s a movement. I want to come here and listen. That was my agenda. To listen to the women and men who are working here and making cinema.”
Williams, who has taken a two-and-a-half-year break from acting since she starred in Steven Spielberg’s movie The Fabelmans, disclosed to Deadline that her next project will begin next spring and will see her team up again with network FX.
As we reported yesterday, that project is limited series Dying For Sex, based on the hit Wondery podcast. The drama charts the story of a woman (Williams) diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer who leaves her husband of 15 years and begins to explore her sexuality. She gets the courage and support to go on this adventure from her best friend, who stays by her side all the way to the very end. Writers are Liz Meriwether (The Dropout) and Kim Rosenstock (Only Murders in the Building), and director is Leslye Headland (Acolyte).
“It has been a while since I worked,” explained Williams. “I have three children at home. It takes just the right project to lure me away but after two and a half years I’m going back to work in the spring to make a limited series for FX where I made Fosse/Verdon [Williams’ performance scored her Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG wins] and I had such a special time. I’m really looking forward to going back to somewhere that feels like a creative home for me and where they support me, they believe in me, they listen to me and make room for me. I’m so happy to be able to return there.”
“It’s a very female-led story with a female-led cast and crew,” she added.
Williams is known for her memorable portrayals of emotional resilience and highly sensitive characters, often in cerebral and critically acclaimed movies and series. The actress says her life choices and her investment in cinema in her teenage years was fundamental to informing who she has become.
“I actually grew up in a very non-traditional way. I left formal schooling at 15. I started working as a child as an emancipated minor. My way into film was askew. I sort of learnt on the ground. I think people can relate to that. My training was listening, watching people on the subway, cinema was my teacher. I barely went to high-school and didn’t go to college. I watched movies and they taught me how to be human. They were my family. I left a family structure very young. I watched these people [on screen] and decided who I wanted to be, how I wanted to live and the type of work I wanted to make.”
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