Allison Williams Movies And Tv Shows To Watch If You Loved Her In Girls And M3GAN

Critics love to complain about "nepo babies" — or, more specifically, the children of famous people becoming actors, singers, or what have you — but not every nepo baby is necessarily bad. Allison Williams is a pretty solid example. Ever since her breakout role on Lena Dunham's divisive HBO comedy "Girls" (more on that role shortly), Williams has proven that, despite the fact that her dad is news anchor Brian Williams, she's not just a nepotism hire; she's seriously talented, and this list will prove it. Williams is a sharp, precise, and extremely funny actress who has, at this point in her career, performed in a wide variety of projects. So which ones are the very best? What should you include if you're putting together some sort of Allison Williams retrospective?

From short sitcom guest arcs to a game-changing horror movie to a very gory thriller, here are Williams' best projects ranked from "least great" to "undeniably excellent" — including "Girls" and her recent campy horror flick "M3GAN."

During the first season of Mindy Kaling's eponymous sitcom "The Mindy Project" — and while "Girls" was airing in — Allison Williams briefly appeared in the series in 2013 as a character who is ostensibly named Jillian but is pretty much exclusively referred to as "Eye Patch." In the Season 1 episode "Bunk Bed," Dr. Danny Castellano (Chris Messina), a colleague of Kaling's Dr. Mindy Lahiri, meets Eye Patch in the hospital waiting room. She's interesting, beautiful, and she has an eye patch, so obviously, Danny is pretty intrigued. Danny and Eye Patch go on a date in the following episode, "Hooking Up is Hard," but they're definitely not meant to be.

In her third and final episode "Harry & Sally," while Mindy pursues a guy with a close female friend (the guy in question is played by B.J. Novak, one of Kaling's best friends), Eye Patch breaks up with Danny because he never even tries to show any interest in her life or hobbies. (Also, they have a huge age gap.) Williams' time on "The Mindy Project" is brief, but she set a standard for high-profile guest stars; as the series continued, everyone from Seth Meyers to Chloë Sevigny to Laura Dern to Stephen Colbert appeared in short narrative arcs.

In its second adaptation — the first being a 2004 movie starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, and Jude Law — "A Series of Unfortunate Events" made the move to the small screen in 2018 with a Netflix adaptation of Daniel Handler's best-selling book series. (Frankly, with 13 books in the series, it was a better fit for a TV show anyway.) Though the story centers around the orphaned Baudelaire triplets — Violet (Malina Weissman), Klaus (Louis Hynes), and baby Sunny (Presley Smith) — the Snicket family is also extremely important, and that includes Allison Williams' character Kit Snicket. As the sister to Lemony (Patrick Warburton), the narrator of the series (and stand-in for Handler, who published the novels under the pen name Lemony Snicket in the first place), Kit is a member of the secret organization VFD and shows up every now and then to help the Baudelaires escape the clutches of the evil Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris).

Williams only appears in eight total episodes of "A Series of Unfortunate Events," but as the Baudelaires try and figure out how their parents (played in flashbacks by Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders) were involved in VFD, she often pops up to lend a helping hand and provide any information she can. She's a welcome presence, and her dry wit is perfect for both the character and the show's overall tone every time she appears on-screen.

Allison Williams does admittedly have a certain look that feels perfect for period pieces, so it's kind of strange that 2023's "Fellow Travelers" marks her first foray into the genre. The Showtime original series "Fellow Travelers," created by Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia," "My Policeman") and based on the book of the same name by Thomas Mallon, spans several decades starting in the 1950s and focuses on two men: Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey). At first, Hawk, a veteran of the Second World War, feels free enough to have secret affairs with men despite working for the State Department, but when he meets and falls in love with the extremely religious Tim, things take a turn ... especially when the State Department starts investigating allegations of "homosexuality."

So where does Williams come in? She plays Lucy Smith, daughter of Senator Wesley Smith (Linus Roache), who forms an unexpected bond with Hawk as he searches for a wife to alleviate suspicion about his real lifestyle. Throughout the show's shifting timeline, Lucy tries to create a perfect life with Hawk despite the fact that he's quite clearly with someone else, and though "Fellow Travelers" certainly belongs to Bomer and Bailey, Williams is perfect as the long-suffering wife who understands far more than she'll ever admit.

Be warned: "The Perfection" is not for the faint of heart. That said, if you really want to watch every great Allison Williams performance, you cannot and should not miss her turn in this 2018 Netflix original movie that showcases the dark side of, well, perfectionism. Williams plays Charlotte Wilmore, a cello prodigy who used to study at the prestigious music school Bachoff in Boston, and after a personal tragedy, she gets back in touch with her former mentor and teacher Anton (Steven Weber), who is working with a new student named Lizzie Wells (Logan Browning). In Shanghai, Charlotte and Lizzie go out together and really hit it off (so to speak), but the next day, strange things start happening to Lizzie, and it's revealed that Charlotte drugged Lizzie with her mother's old medication. Before long, you realize exactly why Charlotte did this ... but the movie takes a lot of seriously gruestome twists and turns before it reveals the long game.

Throughout the stomach-turning developments of "The Perfection," Williams plays Charlotte with a steely glint in her eye and a terrifying intensity, and though people knew by this point that she was an excellent horror actress (more on that shortly), it still stands as one of her better performances. If you're brave enough, check out "The Perfection."

If something like "The Perfection" is a little too intense for you, Allison Williams' campy 2023 horror outing "M3GAN" might be more your speed. The movie centers around Williams' character Gemma, an accomplished roboticist, who unexpectedly takes in her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) after Cady's parents are killed in an accident. Gemma isn't exactly a natural with kids, so she gifts Cady with a prototype of a robotic doll named M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 Generative Android. (The "doll" is voiced by Jenna Davis and portrayed by actress and dancer Amie Donald.) M3GAN and Cady bond, which initially proves to Gemma and her team that the robot works as intended. The problem? M3GAN works a little too well, and at a certain point, she starts going to pretty extreme measures to "protect" Cady (which is to say that she kills a handful of people).

In her second Blumhouse Productions project, Williams brings both levity and seriousness to a frankly silly horror movie where a creepy doll dances to Walk the Night by the Skatt Brothers — and without spoiling every single aspect of the movie, she and Cady end up triumphing over the machines in the end. M3GAN is a great turn from Williams, but it simply can't compare to her top two performances. (Something important to note, though, is that Williams did part of her press tour at the American Girl Doll Store in Manhattan, which is just so perfectly weird.)

In the hall of fame of TV villains, you might not think Allison Williams' Marnie Michaels can hold her own against baddies like Walter White or Tony Soprano, but honestly, she's just as awful as either of those guys ... and just as compulsively watchable. "Girls" was always going to be a divisive show — pretty much every girl in the main cast is some sort of nepo baby, and a bad-faith reading of the whole program can be seen as Lena Dunham simply navel-gazing about New York millennials — but it's frustrating that, during its initial run, audiences and critics didn't seem to realize that Williams was playing Marnie and wasn't actually like her at all. (Thankfully, she proved that in the next project, home to her all-time best performance.) Williams' performance as Marnie is brilliant from start to finish, and that's a fact. She's horribly self-absorbed, uptight to the point where she freaks out if things don't go as planned, and is one of the most entitled characters ever depicted on the small screen ... and as much as she'll make you absolutely cringe while you watch her, you've met a Marnie in real life. (Maybe you've even been Marnie once or twice. It's okay if you have.)

None of the characters on "Girls" are role models, but the self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, self-centered Marnie is particularly odious sometimes, even when she's ostensibly doing something kind. Still, throughout the show, Williams found ways to make her performance quietly devastating; in the Season 5 episode "Panic in Central Park," she spends a night in the wilds of New York with her ex-boyfriend Charlie (Christopher Abbott), only to discover some seriously dark things about the man he's become over the years. Somehow, Williams performs all of this gorgeously and manages to make you incredibly uncomfortable while she sings a slowed-down version of Ye's "Stronger" in Season 2. She's brilliant in her breakout role, but it's nothing compared to the role that followed the end of "Girls."

Anyone who watched "Girls" and said Allison Williams couldn't act was immediately proven wrong when Jordan Peele's directorial debut "Get Out" released in early 2017. The brilliant "social thriller" — which ultimately earned Peele an Academy Award for best original screenplay — casts Williams as Rose Armitage, who brings her boyfriend Chris Washington (a stunningly precise Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet her parents Dean and Missy (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener). In a sick, demented twist on "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Chris starts feeling odd and out of place at the Armitage household — especially when they throw an enormous party where he has an upsetting run-in with a man going by the name Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield) — and if you've seen "Get Out," you know that Peele's twist is deft, clever, and darkly funny, and will leave your jaw on the floor as it continues unraveling.

The twist also comes down to Williams' performance, and she absolutely nails it. As Rose, Williams lulls both Chris and the audience into a false sense of security, playing the role of the perfect, understanding girlfriend; when she pulls the rug out from under literally everyone, it's a masterstroke. ("You know I can't give you the keys, right, babe?" remains one of the most horrifying lines ever uttered on film, to say nothing of the milk and Fruit Loops that follow.) Kaluuya is astounding in the movie and deserved his Oscar nod for best actor, but it's a damn crime that Williams didn't get her own nomination — the movie hinges on her performance, and she's truly never been better. If you're ever rewatching "Get Out," go back and watch Williams' Rose carefully the entire time, and you'll be richly rewarded.