If you had wandered the set of the film M3gan 2.0 last year, chances are you would have stumbled into M3gan, the terrifying humanoid doll, staring lifelessly while she waited to be called for her next scene. Sometimes she would stand in the corner of the soundstage, says Allison Williams with a nervy laugh. "The dilemma is: do you turn her around so she's facing the wall, or do you let her face the room? In the sequel to the sci-fi horror M3gan, Williams resumes her role as Gemma, a roboticist who has become a crusader against rampant and reckless AI development after her creation – developed for her orphaned niece – became murderous. Acting opposite M3gan was unsettling, says Williams, speaking over a video call from a hotel room in New York. Sometimes she was played by the 15-year-old dancer Amie Donald, but often she was a robotic doll, animated by a small team. "When she's been working for a while, her eyelids can get sticky," says Williams. M3gan's handlers would paint lubricant on to her eyeballs with a brush and Williams would have to catch herself: "She's not flinching and for a second you're like: 'Ugh.' Then you remember: this is not a live thing." Still best known for her first role as Marnie in Lena Dunham's landmark TV series Girls, Williams has gravitated towards comedy-tinged horror in recent years. Her first post-Girls film role was in the Oscar-winning dark comedy horror Get Out. It and M3gan were relatively low-budget projects that became cultural phenomena – Get Out for its commentary on racial politics, M3gan for what it says about the dangers of AI (as well as the uncanniness of M3gan herself). Williams has long been interested in AI – she knows Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, who put her in touch with robotics experts when she was researching the role of Gemma. The film raises questions not only about the danger of rogue AI, but about the ethical concerns –including how we should feel about the "rights" of devices. "It's easy to imbue anything that has AI in it with humanity.

With 2022 almost over it's almost time to ring in a new year of movies and one of the biggest projects being released at the beginning of 2023 will be M3gan. M3gan is the story of a robotic doll with artificial intelligence that serves as a protector to the child that owns her, but things go haywire and she begins killing. With the film releasing right around the corner we're beginning to see more and more from M3gan and now we have a brand new clip that shows off the doll horrific forest kill. You can check out the clip below! There have been rumblings that Anabelle and M3gan could go toe to toe in a battle of the dolls, but nothing has been official.

On a chilly but humane November night in Toronto, Allison Williams and I slip into an expansive conversation about the polite ways one can manipulate an audience. Williams is an actress, one of the more self-aware of her generation; audience manipulation is her not-so-secret weapon. I have interviewed Williams several times over the years, and each time is as lovely and warm and full of mutual compliments as the last. I would say, at this point, we like one another. Is it possible to have an "authentic" connection during a press commitment between two people who know how the personality machine operates and are each trying to work it for their own advantage?