M3GAN is finally here and we all have a new best friend. The AI doll who is meant to be your best friend and the toy you can always count on loves to murder and that’s all thanks to her creator, Gemma. Made as a way to basically replace a parent when they’re too busy to deal with their kids, M3GAN as an entity is frightening to think about but she’s also perfect. The Gerard Johnstone film is taking audiences by storm, thanks to the brilliant writing from Akela Cooper and it all comes together with the believability that Gemma could and would make this doll come to life.
In talking with The Hollywood Reporter, star Allison Williams (who plays Gemma) revealed her process in becoming M3GAN’s creator, a roboticist who suddenly finds herself as the sole guardian for her young niece Cady (Violet McGraw) and struggling to find a balance between her work for a toy manufacturer that uses cutting edge technology to make their toys more advanced than their competition and her niece who now has no one to turn to.
For Williams, she knew that the role of Gemma had to come across as someone who knew what she was talking about and that’s exactly how she reads on-screen, thanks to Williams’ preparation. She spoke with “a bunch of people” from roboticists, engineers, and “smart” AI experts to nail down Gemma and how she would interact with this world and it shows.
“I understood almost nothing that they told me,” Williams joked. She explained:
“I asked about what it’s like to be a woman in this field where there are so many men. I wanted to know what to wear and how to dress. Do you go full femme? Do you wear makeup? From the very superficial to the much deeper questions of why did you get into this field? What motivated you? Did you have role models? It was great.”
With a character like Gemma, her brilliance is being used to make Furby-like toys more accessible to children to make her boss David (Ronny Chieng) more money. So when she spends a lot of company money on M3GAN, the AI doll meant to be a protector and best friend, things go horribly wrong as M3GAN takes her protection of Cady to extreme levels. But the movie works, particularly Williams’ performance because you believe that Gemma and her team could create M3GAN and that it would weigh heavily on them when things go awry. And that’s all thanks to the work that Williams put in before.
M3GAN is now playing in theaters and you can check out our interview with Williams down below.
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