Michelle Williams
by Matthew Cowen
*George Magazine - July 1999*
Michelle Williams stars as a teenage White House helper with a crush on Richard Nixon in Dick, this summer's hottest political farce. Sound like anyone else we know?
Michelle Williams spends most of her new film Dick batting doe eyes at unlikely sex symbol Richard Nixon. For once, men might want to swap places with the disgraced president. Williams, best known as the Lolita-ish seductress Jen on the WB's teen tsunami Dawson's Creek, has never had much trouble sporting her sensual side. But Humbert Humberts, beware: Offscreen, it's an entirely different plot. "You can't give sex away too freely," Williams warns. "I hate how they made Monica a celebrity. She was on Saturday Night Live because she had sex with the wrong guy."
Though Williams, 18, never actually has sexual relation with His Jowliness, she does have her share of Monica moments in the film. As a gullible, geeky teen, she stumbles through the Watergate scandal, unwittingly bringing down the presidency. "It's nice that my tits aren't the focal point of every scene," she explains. "But acting stupid drove me crazy. It's not me."
When it comes to politics, Williams is no novice. The precocious actress lost her political innocence early by debating issues with her father, Larry, a former Republican candidate for the Montana state senate, and she bears her conservative values with pride. "You take away the right to bear arms, and next it'll be 'Well, this freedom of speech isn't all it's cracked up to be,'" she says of the current gun control furor.
Williams isn't gun-shy about standing up to Uncle Sam, and she's not happy about waiting until the 2000 election to have her say at the ballot. "I've been working and paying my taxes for 10 years without having the right to vote," she declares. "It's taxation without representation!"