“Regretting You” pulls you in on the promise of a love story; it keeps you there with a coming-of-age that’s had to wait far too long. On the surface, this adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s book of the same name is a family drama about a mother and daughter dealing with grief, betrayal and budding love. Perhaps the most compelling journey through these turbulent waters is that of Morgan Grant (Allison Williams, “Get Out”).
The upheaval of her entire family is the first time that this character is allowed to take a look around at her life and make it her own. She’s a woman whose entire identity has revolved around caretaking — for her younger sister, for her husband, for her daughter — but never for herself. In following Morgan through the journey to liberation after a lifetime of restraint, women watching are released from the suffocating reality of what it costs to meet society’s expectations for them.
The Michigan Daily spoke with star Allison Williams about the process of embodying Morgan’s complex emotional unraveling.
This virtual roundtable interview has been edited for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: Morgan’s emotional journey becomes the real anchor of the film. What informed your portrayal of her intensity in grief, anger and all those emotions we don’t usually let women feel, especially mothers?
Allison Williams: My own feelings kind of informed them. I’ve never been through exactly what Morgan went through, which is, like, uniquely horrible. But, as is true for, I think, just about everyone, I have experienced loss. I have experienced rage. I have experienced worry, stress and overwhelm.
The process of playing this part was sort of like taking all those things that I felt and putting them into a mixing jar and melding them together, bringing things out at weird moments because it’s so nonlinear. One minute you’re crying on the couch, wine drunk, watching The Real Housewives and the next minute you’re beating up a car. It is just a very up and down kind of thing, grief. So I loved having the opportunity to play it.
And I loved getting to show rage. When I get angry, I don’t get physical, but (portraying) that was great, and I wish I was maybe a little less WASPy (associated with traits of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), and I felt more big and rageful in my anger. My anger makes me quiet, but I kind of envy Morgan. Like, yeah, beat up a car! We need to just have a broken-down car in our backyard for when the printer’s not working, just take the bat, go beat up the car.
TMD: You’ve talked about your struggle with anxiety, and Morgan is a character who seems to be hovering just above her anxiety to be present for everyone else. How did you balance her journey through that to finding herself, for possibly the first time in her life?
AW: I just imagine myself without therapy or anxiety medication or anything for my whole life. I literally can’t imagine white-knuckling what she’s gone through without any of those resources. I think she’s someone who very much would’ve seen therapy as self-indulgent or “things aren’t bad, so I don’t need that.” Having been in therapy for over half my life just on a maintenance level, trying to keep everything okay, and as someone who definitely has anxiety and has been aware of it for a really long time, I can’t imagine going through life with Morgan’s tools and doing her best without having all the resources she could have.
I think she’s internalized a lot of messaging about what motherhood and womanhood look like. My hope for her in the future, beyond the movie, is that she continues to liberate herself from those constraints of what she thought she was supposed to look like, that she really gets to live the rest of her life for herself. I think she’ll find that being good at all of those other jobs will come along with it.
To catch a glimpse of Morgan’s emotional journey, find “Regretting You” now on Digital.
Daily Arts Writer Mina Tobya can be reached at mtobya@umich.edu.
