In the hotly-anticipated new horror film M3GAN, Allison Williams plays Gemma, a roboticist who works at a toy company. When her sister and brother-in-law die in a car accident, she is left to care for her young niece, Cady, and is ill-equipped to do so. To aid her, she creates an AI-enhanced Model 3 Generative Android – M3GAN – who pairs with Cady and becomes her best friend and her protector… to a dangerous level.

We sat down with Williams, who spoke about working with M3GAN, and on M3GAN, the film on which Williams got her first executive producer credit – a role which she loves a little too much. You can check out all of this and more in the video above, or you can read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: So Allison, tell me a little bit about working with M3GAN.

ALLISON WILLIAMS: It was… I’m not going to say too much because I don’t want to spoil who M3GAN is and how she comes to be because I think it’s the most fun if you are in the theater, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s just M3GAN.”

That said, it was fascinating. I learned a lot. I think we all did. It was a very challenging, multifaceted approach. I think it took teamwork from every single corner of our crew. That said, it was something I will never forget and an experience that I doubt I will ever have again, [nothing] remotely like it, because it was such a hybrid kind of endeavor.

Image via Blumhouse

Was it creepy?

WILLIAMS: Yes, the creepier moments, I think, were the ones where we weren’t actually shooting. So between “cut” and the next “action,” either while we were doing a scene together or even just during a break when she was not working, [was] very eerie just because I think she’s so alive to me. She seems so real that even when she’s not talking or doing anything, it’s so easy to just project that onto her, to imagine that she’s just going to strike up a conversation with you. And that element of it added a real sense of eeriness to being around her. Deeply eerie, I guess is how I would describe it.

Did she ever talk to you during those breaks?

WILLIAMS: If I said yes, your next call should be to someone who’s going to take good, loving care of me and make sure I’m okay. No, she never did, I’m happy to report. I have most of my marbles still.

You were an executive producer on this.

WILLIAMS: I was.

What did that entail for you? How did you juggle that with being an actor on this?

WILLIAMS: I really loved it. It was my first time officially being an executive producer on a movie I’ve worked on. I have always been super involved in the things that I work on. It’s just my nature. I’m Type A, what can I say? So, from the script to even the edit of the movie, to the way it’s promoted and all of it, I like to be involved in all of it. I find it fascinating.

And so with this one, I just officially got to. I got to be on the email distributions of, “We’re trying to clear these toys for Gemma’s shelf, and we can’t get any toys from this company. But these are stuck in customs in Japan, and we can’t get them out.” I loved knowing all of that. At lunch every day we had a production meeting. And so I’d be Gemma for 10 hours, and then we’d break for lunch, and I’d be the executive producer, and we’d talk about the rest of the day and the schedule going forward and stuff, and how we’re going to achieve all of this stuff, or such-and-such actor can’t come in anymore. We have to recap, whatever, the logistics, and then go back into being Gemma.

I loved it all, and I’m loving the experience of promoting it and delivering M3GAN to the world and the marketing, and I’m not in charge of any of it. The great joy is being able to work with people who are and learn from all of the experts and the geniuses who come up with these trailers and who come up with the marketing campaigns. It’s just so much fun. I found that it deepened my experience as an actor because it allowed my investment to be as deep as I always want it to be. I was able to just feel like I had kind of a 360 point of view on what was going on.

Image via Blumhouse

Do you plan on producing more?

WILLIAMS: Yes, I would love to. It’s going to be hard to go back. I’m currently shooting something where I’m not producing it, and it’s so hard to not be wanting to know everything that’s going on. It’s just an instinct that I have, I don’t know, maybe from doing jobs on sets when I was growing up, like PA and stuff like that. I like just knowing what’s happening, and when I get to officially know what’s happening, it definitely makes me less sheepish about asking those questions. I feel like I’m entitled to the answer.

Yeah, instead of just sneaking around.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, exactly, but also, the stuff I want to know is so un-sexy. It’s just logistical information about how the shoot’s going, and I’m just titillated by it. I’m like, “What does this do to our board? Are we going to have to add days?” Everyone’s like, “Oh my God.” If I were responsible for paying for it, these things would be terrifying. But it’s just interesting from my POV.

M3GAN dances into theaters on January 6, 2023. For more on the movie, check out Alyse’s interview with producer James Wan below: