Michelle Williams (Dying for Sex, Manchester by the Sea, Brokeback Mountain) is a Golden Globe-winning and Oscar and Tony-nominated actress. Michelle joins the Armchair Expert to discuss what constitutes an apex dinosaur skeleton, thinking she may have had one of the the last great American childhoods, and missing getting into good trouble and trying to recreate those opportunities for her kids. Michelle and Dax talk about why nature is the greatest impartial teacher of danger and safety, not realizing that she’s the type of person that makes people nervous, and becoming emancipated at 15 before booking Dawson’s Creek. Michelle explains whether she sensed what Brokeback Mountain would become while she was making it, seeing her work as a record of herself to leave for her kids, and being overwhelmed by emotion listening to the source material for Dying for Sex.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Michelle Williams' early childhood experiences?
I wish it said right here, but I want to say it's like five Academy Award nominations or something bonkers. Definitely four and I think maybe five. Emmy win. Tony nomination. Yeah, she's just a powerhouse. Blue Valentine. Dawson's Creek originally. That's where we fell in love with her. Brokeback Mountain. My Week with Marilyn. Manchester by the Sea, my favorite. Five.
Five nominations.
Five nominations. And her new series that's out now with my former boss, Liz Merriweather, Dying for Sex on FX and Hulu. Right now, I urge everyone to go watch it. It's very bold. It goes hard.
Yeah, it does.
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He's an uptake spread I know what I saw.
That's a tour bus. My neighbors think Aerosmith's spending the night.
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Chapter 2: How did Michelle Williams transition to acting as a teenager?
A lot of probably toots.
There's been some unfortunate... It's a small room for two days.
Yeah, well, we invite it.
I don't ever do it when there's guests, but Monica would sit where you're at for the fact check. This is a questionable distance, right?
It's also that chair is like a sound absorber. It really is.
A sound absorber and just a muffler in general. And probably, well, I know absorbent. And so a lot of times I'm like, yeah, I think that's far enough away for me to try one. And I've gotten away with most of them. I usually out myself.
No, yeah, you do a good job.
I have a lot of integrity, Michelle.
That's so honest.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Michelle face during her time on Dawson's Creek?
We have a lot to catch you up on. Monica and I want to invest in a real T-Rex skull. They're very expensive, but we want to monetize it by renting out the mouth and turn it into a sex hotel because people would love to have sex in the mouth of a T-Rex.
It's very novel. I'm sad nobody can see my face right now.
What do you think? Whoa.
Yeah. Is that like whoa?
Positive?
Yeah. Whoa.
Or just mind blowing in general?
Is it the level of creativity that has your mind blown? Yeah, kind of.
I'm also just like thinking like, what would I do in that school?
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Chapter 4: How did Brokeback Mountain change Michelle's career?
Have you read? That's its name.
I think, I think. Look, I'm working really hard to catch up to his level of dino knowledge.
Yeah, it's hard to compete. They gobble it up. Have you read Unstoppable Us to him?
No, I don't know that one.
It's Yuval Harari who wrote Sapiens. He did a kid's version of Sapiens. We've read it to our kids several times. It's incredible.
Fantastic. His birthday's coming up. Thank you so much.
They found many of these dinosaurs, ding, ding, ding, in your birthplace. Isn't Montana a big site for these skeletons?
I think it's why my son loves me. It's a big point of connection for us that Montana is home to so many dinosaurs, especially the myasora, the great mother lizard.
You know your shit.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Michelle offer about parenting and career balance?
Because Annie was your first thing.
I think so. I was a back row orphan.
I think Annie's a gateway drug.
Oh, yeah.
Because my daughter's about to do it in a month and our other friend's kid is currently doing Annie at the same time.
Songs like that, they hook into you and then you think you should spend your whole life singing them and you would be a happy person.
Yeah, did you want to be a singer?
Yeah, I really wanted to sing and dance. That just looked like a whole lot of fun to me.
But were you good at singing or dancing?
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of Michelle's Emmy-winning role in Fosse/Verdon?
I still feel like that. I'm like, well, who knows? Because an ecstatic experience doesn't always relate to a great thing and a terrible experience. Sometimes you're like, they polished that turd. It's so hard to, when you're in something, really have an idea of how it's going to be received. I would say impossible.
And at that point, I hadn't really been in anything either that had enjoyed a reception. So it certainly wasn't on my mind.
Yeah, you'd get nominated for Academy Award at the end of it all.
No, that was not... Not what I was thinking.
Although one thing can happen. I've never met Ang Lee, but did you sense from him he had a spirit that was special and that somehow that was going to be present in the product?
For sure. I mean, he's such a beautiful person. artist and has this incredible body of work. And the Annie Proulx story that it's based on and then the adaptation, it's undeniable material. And so brought together under Ang Lee probably is going to be a good thing, but would anyone see it? It's about gay men, which was not really being done.
We're in a post-Brokeback Mountain world where we take for granted that story could be successful. But prior to that, we don't have that.
That was a first.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you're comfortable talking about Heath, but I feel obligated to say that I knew him a little bit when he was getting sober. And I don't know that I've ever fallen in love with someone so quickly. This is one of the most special boys I've ever met, and I can feel the weight of the world on him. in a very special way that kind of broke my heart. I was very, very sad.
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Chapter 7: How has motherhood influenced Michelle's professional choices?
It's a really beautiful way to look at it. I like that.
How was the life-altering shift of you're going to be at the Academy Awards? Was that a natural transition?
No, with a baby. But I suppose maybe it's a good thing about being young is that you don't have so much life experience that you can contextualize things. So you're really just going with the flow.
Yeah, because I was going to say another theme I see present when I look at your life in its totality, and I doubt you reflect back on it in its totality, but... You have had many moments where you seem to have an incredibly healthy relationship with the job.
Because I think having a baby on the heels of an Academy Award nomination, most people are like, okay, get me the list of all the directors I can now work with and it's time to go. And that seems like a very healthy relationship that you were like, no, it's time to have a baby.
Kids are such great life checkers. They force you to put your best self in front of them. You can't abdicate your life and your work and your own desires, but you do have to put them in check and figure out which master you're going to serve. Because the truth is, if work is going well, somebody else is taking care of the kids. And if You're in a high point with your kids.
The work is shoved to the side. So you can't be equally good at them at the exact same time. And you have to allow for that give and take, but then also replenish the other things. If you have a big period of being at home, you need to go back to what you've left unattended and put some light over there.
So I think it's just this constant back and forth, but making sure that you don't leave one of them unattended for too long.
This is my main thing I've taken from parenting is it right-sized all my other concerns and pursuits in a very helpful way, ironically. I kind of thought, oh, you have kids, I'll be so distracted, there'll be no time.
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Chapter 8: What is the story behind the creation of Dying for Sex?
We should do like a kid podcast. Some of this stuff that I think gives people anxiety about having kids is my absolute favorite stuff. Once they have some shit to get into, I'm like, let's party. I've done it all. I've fucked up in every way possible. It's go time. It's so rewarding.
I similarly learned by parenting, oh, actually, when I make mistakes in front of my daughter and own up to them and apologize, it teaches her to make mistakes and say, oopsie, mommy, I'm sorry. And it's not a big deal. It's a part of life. And we move on. No shame, no blame. Just you made a mistake. Beautiful. I made five already today.
I'm not going to blame anyone in my parenting circle, but I could not make a mistake. Maybe it was self-imposed. If I fucked something up, I would just lie.
Yeah.
I know in the fact that my kids fuck shit up and then they come tell me and I'm like, oh my God, this is incredible. They're better than me. I was hiding things I broke.
That's because you thought there was a reason to hide things, something that you were afraid of.
Well, again, it's not her fault, but single mom, three kids, it was fucking chaotic. I couldn't put anything on her plate. I just did not want to be another burden in her very burdened life. So I think kind of self-imposed.
But then you corrected it. Now your kids pass that on and it stops with you.
At least that one part. I catch myself all the time. Do you do this? This is last night. I catch myself being annoying in the exact same way my mom and dad were annoying to me. I want to play and I'm always petting their hair. I'm pulling their ear. And most of the time they like it. And then a lot of times they'd look at me and I'm like, oh my God, I know this so well. This is my dad.
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