Michelle Williams’ Unexpected Emmy Moment
Michelle Williams was just about to refuse the offer that later made her win an Emmy nomination.
The 45-year-old actress is a leading contender for Best Lead Actress on the evening of Sunday for her work in Dying For Sex, an FX limited series which, besides acting, she also produced. The series is about a woman who is dying from cancer and decides to live out her sex life.
However, Williams was so close to turning down the job that she even considered relocating the production to LA. She has always been a New Yorker – first, a single mother, and then the wife of producer Tommy Kail and mother of their three kids. The city has been her support and her challenge, a place of great love and great loss at the same time.
Impossible to forget, 17 years ago, Williams went through a very hard time when Heath Ledger, the father of her daughter Matilda (now 19), died from an overdose.
From Heartbreak to Healing
Despite the fact that Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger called it quits in 2007—due to his drug problems, as it was reported—she was still deeply affected by his passing alongside their daughter, Matilda.
“The void in that place will never be filled because what we want back that we can’t get, which is this person,” Williams said to Marie Claire in 2011.
People who know her well say they are delighted to see Williams not only successful with her career but also happy with her own life.
Strength Through Grief and Success
“She completely deserves it. If Heath was present here, I bet he wouldn’t be amazed,” stated Diana Ossana, the Brokeback Mountain screenwriter— the movie where Michelle Williams met and fell in love with Heath Ledger. “It is only with pleasure that I acknowledge her success,” Ossana told that Williams at the time of Ledger’s passing was so upset that she had to take care of their daughter, Matilda, besides being overwhelmed with grief. “Experiencing her grief, trying to figure out what was best for her daughter, she took her time. Michelle had so much to go through between her death, love, and what was best for Matilda. She really is like iron underneath.”
The combination of that tenacity with Williams’s rare talent to show both grit and vulnerability has made her the one of the most charismatic actors on stage and screen nowadays.
Finding Light through a Difficult Role
In Dying For Sex, Michelle Williams is seen playing the part of Molly Kochan — an actual New Yorker who, following a diagnosis of terminal cancer, left her marriage to pursue a sexual awakening.
“She selects characters that are difficult to portray. She manages it in such a lovely way. When the character is not very engaging, she’s her cheerful, really nice self,” actress Jillian Mercado, who worked with her, told Page Six. “She has lived through so much – so many highs and lows, heartbreak, death. [But] she is such a bright person – she is wonderful in a way … even with such a heavy role like this, she was just so nice to work with.”
Mercado also stated that regardless of how taxing the role was, Williams always kept her heart at home with her family.
The Family She Always Dreamed Of
“She was always saying how she just wanted to go back home and be with her children. I could see the glow on her face – the way she was with her,” said Jillian Mercado of Michelle Williams.
In a 2012 interview with GQ, Williams confessed, “I definitely wanted and expected Matilda to have siblings that were close to her age.” However, that dream had to wait very long to come true as she now has the larger family she used to imagine.
Williams and her husband, director-producer Thomas Kail—whom she married in 2020—just had a daughter through surrogate to add their two sons born in 2020 and 2022. (Apart from the name of their eldest, Hart, no other names have been revealed.)
The duo met for the first time while filming FX’s Fosse/Verdon in 2018, a project that led to Williams’ next Emmy accolade.
A Surprise Marriage and Heartbreaking Background
When Michelle Williams met Thomas Kail, both were still married to their spouses—Kail to actress Angela Christian, and Williams to musician Phil Elverum.
Her marriage to Elverum was surprising, partially because of how low-profile it was. The two had secretly married in the Adirondacks in 2018, after a love affair that was entirely closed down.
“Of course, I’ve never in my life, spoken once about a relationship … but Phil is not anyone else. And that is something. At the end of the day the way he loves me is the way I want to live my life,” she said to Vanity Fair at that time.
Elverum also had to go through a lot of sorrow a few years before. His first wife, Canadian artist Geneviève Castrée, passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2016—only a year after the birth of their daughter.
A Short-Lived Marriage
Elverum Williams, along with their daughters, were intended to create a forever home in the 6,500-square-foot mansion she had bought and remodeled in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park South neighborhood.
However, that was not going to happen.
The couple separated just one year after they got married. People was told by a source that Williams “swiftly jumped into a permanent relationship without allowing it to be something over time.”
The short marriage shocked a lot of people, as Williams was known to be very careful in her love life. She had been romantically involved with several celebrities, like actor Jason Segel (who is also nominated for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series this year for Shrinking), film directors Spike Jonze and Cary Joji Fukunaga, visual artist Dustin Yellin, writer Jonathan Safran Foer, and financial consultant Andrew Youmans, but she had never been serious with any of them.
The Love That Defined Her Public Story
One of the common themes relating to Michelle Williams that we could frequently find in media reports was that she was not the one to experience a love similar to that which she had with Heath Ledger. Whereas, Diana Ossana – the writer of Brokeback Mountain – reminisced about how the two, being on screen as a married couple, had suddenly become very close to each other off-screen as well. “The toboggan scene, when we first see her with Ennis [Ledger] on the snowy little hill — she fell off and hurt her knee. We had to take her to the hospital in a hurry. Heath was looking at her — I saw it right there. He was already in love with her. They were only on set for a week,” Ossana remembered.
Almost immediately their love affair sprang up. The couple went out soon after and both were nominated for Oscars for their roles in the film. They also had their daughter Matilda that year, born just two months before Brokeback Mountain premiered in October 2005.
Life With—and Loss of—Ledger
After getting the part of Jen Lindley in the adolescent drama series Dawson’s Creek, Michelle Williams was well on her way of becoming a household name in the entertainment world. For the tabloids, the two of them were the stars of the pictures, besides their $3.6 million Boerum Hill townhouse, where they were frequently snapped by the paparazzi. However, to the neighbors, they were recognized for a quiet, grounded way of life – they were usually seen eating at local restaurants like the Good Fork in Red Hook.
Only tragedy happened five months after the couple parted ways when Ledger took his life with an overdose of prescription medicine at a SoHo apartment.
“I met her [Williams] after the death of Heath, it was a difficult time for both of us,” Diana Ossana reminisced.
Finding Strength in Motherhood
After Heath Ledger’s passing, Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda escaped to upstate New York, where Williams’ longtime friend—future Succession star Jeremy Strong—came in to support her during the sadest time.
“Jeremy was the one who could be serious enough to hold the weight of a child’s broken heart and be sensitive enough to understand how to approach her through play and games and silliness,” Williams said to Variety in 2022.
Motherhood, however, was still her most important role through everything, her lifeboat when dealing with loss, career, and life/change after disaster.
Balancing Family, Love, and Career
“For sure, she never left her daughter’s side,” a Red Hook bar owner told Page Six of Michelle Williams’ life with Matilda in the neighborhood in 2012, referring to their numerous visits to the Pioneer Works arts center.
On the other hand, Williams and her husband Thomas Kail have another plan to get their personal and professional lives connected. In fact, next November, Kail will be directing the return of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn with her as the lead.
Jillian Mercado, who is still energized by her collaboration with Williams, is giving her the loudest support this award season. “She deserves all the wins,” she said, very much hoping that Williams will shine on the Emmy stage.
