21-05-2025
Michelle Williams spills on 'horrible' experience living with Ryan Gosling
15 years after earning an Oscar nomination for Blue Valentine, Michelle Williams recounts the 'horrible' experience where she actually lived with co-star Ryan Gosling.
The film from writer-director Derek Cianfrance (The Place Between the Pines) was critically acclaimed, earning praise for both Williams and Gosling's raw performances.
They portrayed a young married couple named Dean and Cindy, as the film shifts the narrative between various points of their relationship, including the dissolution of their marriage.
Williams, 44, who was just a year removed from losing her partner Heath Ledger when filming began in 2009, opened up on the unique experience on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.
The actors both agreed that to fully explore the depths of their characters relationship, they should temporarily live together, in a purely professional setting.
However, she described the experience as 'horrible,' since it also marked a major shift in the couple's dynamic.
The film goes back and forth from Dean and Cindy being happy and in love to them being quite the opposite, with Williams explaining there was a 'break in filming' between those two halves.
'We shot the first part when they're young and in love and everything's going really great, then we took a two-week break and we lived together,' Williams explained.
She added it was more like, 'office hours, 9 to 5, baby,' and they were not actually cohabitating, but they did this so they could 'destroy' the loving couple they had built before their filming break.
'We did these improvisations during the day, honestly, to figure out ways to annoy each other. And to destroy this thing that we had made,' she admitted.
The actress continued that they originally weren't going to take that break but added, 'We were having such a hard time letting go of the thing that we loved.'
Director Cianfrance told them, 'We gotta mess this up, and we need to burn it down,' which lead to a bizarre ceremony.
'And we did a ceremonial burned our wedding photo and then we learned how to annoy each other,' Williams admitted.
When Shepard admitted that would have been very difficult doing that with someone you have just met a few months earlier, Williams admitted, 'I know, it was horrible.'
She added it was more like, 'office hours, 9 to 5, baby,' and they were not actually cohabitating, but they did this so they could 'destroy' the loving couple they had built before their filming break
'It was horrible i don't want to give you reasons to hate me or come in obnoxious,' adding, 'We were having such a good time the party has to be over so soon.'
She added she, 'really was,' feeling the heartbreak in that second half of the shoot, adding, 'I was younger then,' and she couldn't always leave those emotions on set.
'A hard day at work for me now i feel it and I go through it but I definitely know that I get to go home i can really close the door on it. When I was younger it would definitely seep under the door,' she admitted.
Williams was nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of Cindy, though she ultimately lost to Natalie Portman for her portrayal in Black Swan.
