Fifteen years after “Blue Valentine” premiered, Michelle Williams looked back at living together with her co-star Ryan Gosling so they could learn to “annoy each other.” Williams recently appeared on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, recalling incorporating method acting for the plot after shooting the film’s first part.
To fully get into character, they pretended to be a married couple and shared a home. The star explained that they only lived together part-time in a “professional situation.” A year later, she received an Oscar nomination for her role.
Michelle Williams reveals she and Ryan Gosling lived together to ‘destroy’ their ‘marriage’
It’s a well-known truth that Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling went deep into method acting while filming “Blue Valentine” more than a decade ago. The former revealed in the “Armchair Expert” podcast that after shooting the first part, they took a break when she and Gosling lived together to grasp their respective characters. “We lived together office hours baby like 9-5,” Williams explained, claiming it was a part-time and “professional” situation.
The actor added that these “improvisations” happened during the day, so they could “figure out ways to annoy each other” and “destroy” their characters’ marriage. She continued that the break in between filming wasn’t initially part of the arrangement, and remembered director Derek Cianfrance hatching the plan to really “mess this up” and “burn it down.” Hence, they performed a “ceremonial” by lighting their wedding photo in flames and learned “how to annoy each other.”
Furthermore, Michelle Williams questioned the plausibility of anybody working like her and Ryan Gosling happening again. “You’ve got a crew that’s on hold, you’re paying people,” she explained, adding that it was a low-budget film with a small team. Williams believed “taking a down period” in the middle of it to “play and explore” is inconceivable. Additionally, she claimed it was a “horrible” experience as she didn’t want to “give you [Gosling] any reasons to hate me.”
