Allison Williams is in M3GAN 2.0, streaming now on Peacock. (She’s also in Regretting You, which looks like trash.) The first M3GAN film was fun, although it should have leaned more into the camp. This sequel had such a ridiculous premise that we turned it off. The plot seemed like it was written by AI, but I’ll spare you the details in case you want to give it a chance. Allison is establishing herself as a scream queen, having branched out from Girls to Get Out, The Perfection and now the M3GAN films. She’s a somewhat wooden actress but she’s decent and believable in most of these roles. She’s also the daughter of news anchor Brian Williams, which undoubtedly gave her an advantage in her career. Allison knows this and is refreshingly open about it. In an interview with Jenna Bush on Jenna’s podcast (as reported by Today.com), Allison admitted that she’s benefitted from nepotism. Jenna admitted it too. Good for them.

Jenna’s conversation with Allison Williams gets deep quick, touching on the actor’s time on “Girls,” her experience as a toddler mom and the pressure of adapting a Colleen Hoover novel.

Williams also opens up about her relationship to the term “nepo baby,” which rose to popularity in 2022 as a way to describe the famous child of famous parents. While some shirk the label, she embraces it.

“It’s 100% a phenomenon and one of the first examples is my career,” Williams says.

Williams’ dad is newscaster Brian Williams and her mom, Jane Stoddard, is a news producer. After graduating from college, Williams starred in a music video remaking the “Mad Men” theme song. She says coverage of the video — and headlines about her being Brian Williams’ daughter — led to her being cast as Marnie in “Girls,” which launched her acting career.

“I thought (the video) was good, because I’m my dad’s daughter, it got picked up places. And because of that, Judd Apatow saw it on the Huffington Post, and he was in the process of casting the role of Marnie. They asked me to come and audition,” she remembers.

The experience led Williams to conclude that it’s “crazy” when “people deny that having connections is helpful.”

“There’s a net that not everyone has. If you’re going into a creative pursuit, knowing that there’s only so far you can fall, is a fundamentally different pursuit than it is if you are leaving your hometown with nothing except your aspirations,” she continues to Jenna.

She says she is trying to say the “quiet part out loud” about the industry’s “unfairness.”

“When you’re watching from the wings and trying to get into business, and you need to get someone to open the door for you, it is maddening to watch people just waltz through it and not struggle the way you are — we are so lucky,” she says.

Jenna says she relates, giving the example of when the book she wrote was covered by TODAY, long before she started working there.

“That doesn’t happen for everyone. That was because my dad was president of the United States,” she says.

They also speak about the flip-side of that privilege: Jenna shares that she worked “so hard” in her career because she felt like she had something to prove.

Williams thinks people get “defensive” about this topic because they think people are “coming for their hard work.”

“No one can take my hard work — that’s mine. My skill is up to everyone else to decide. Unfortunately, as much as I love control, I’m never going to be able to make everyone like me,” she says. “But I will try.”

[From Today.com]

Allison described nepotism perfectly without getting defensive and this is rare. She’s lucky, she’s had doors open to her because of her name and she has an incredible safety net thanks to her family’s wealth. That doesn’t mean she’s not a hard worker or isn’t talented, just that she has massive advantages. That’s all we want to hear from celebrities who benefit from nepotism, just a gentle acknowledgement. She now joins a short list of good nepo babies that includes Jack Quaid, Bryce Dallas Howard, Maya Hawke, Cooper Hoffman and Jason Ritter.

Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon