Michelle Williams covers the May issue of Interview Magazine, and these are some of the photos from the shoot… the full pictorial is here, with the full online interview cover story excerpt. Can I just say? I want to like Michelle, but I’m not now and I have never been the kind of woman who appreciates wispy, girly, fragile-seeming women. They grate on my nerves, honestly. I want them to stop talking in their baby voice, stand up straight, eat something with substance and burn every article of clothing with a Peter Pan collar and/or lace paneling. That’s what I want for Michelle… I want her to be or seem stronger, more substantial as a person, less delicate.

So… back to the photo shoot. How else are you going to photograph her? Pale blues, whites, every photo looking like it might break. It gets boring. Michelle is promoting her new film, Meek’s Cutoff, a movie about “three couples in 1845 who, while traveling through the Oregon desert by covered wagon, begin to suspect that their guide, Stephen Meek, has led them astray.” Here are some highlights from the interview:

VENDELA VIDA: I know you were born in Montana, but are you of Scandinavian descent?
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: I’m Norwegian.

VIDA: I thought so, because Ingrid is your middle name and your mom has a Scandinavian-sounding maiden name: Swenson. Did you ever hear Norwegian in the household, or did you ever go back to Norway?
WILLIAMS: No, I’ve never been, and my mom didn’t speak it. We made a lot of lefsa, a Norwegian dessert, to compensate. I was talking to my grandma on the phone maybe a month ago, and she said, “Did you ever hear this story about Inge? Inge Jacobin?” I said, “No, but it’s a great name, Inge Jacobin. Tell me about Inge Jacobin.” Inge Jacobin would be my great, great grandmother, I think, and she was a stowaway. At 15 years old, she got on a boat from Norway, made it to Ellis Island, and then hopped on a covered wagon, and that’s how they got to Montana. I found that out after I made Meek’s.

Living on her own at the age of 15: “It gave me so much comfort. Why did I have that urge? I think it was Inge Jacobin’s bones kicking around in me… I went to L.A. At that point my family was living in San Diego, so it wasn’t as big an undertaking as Inge Jacobin’s. I hopped around from crappy apartment complex to crappy apartment complex in the Los Angeles area.”

On making a home: “I had always been kind of obsessed with making a home of my own and was always drawing rooms that I wanted to live in, down to pictures on the wall and the faces that would be in the photographs, and how the couches would be situated. I just remember moving furniture around a lot. I remember that the tool included with the Ikea furniture promised to assemble everything but didn’t. It was all light wood, by the way. Norwegian looking, the sales guy told me. I sat in frustration with a lot of cardboard boxes around me, eating Clif bars for dinner because I couldn’t cook. I was making house, but at night, because no one was there telling me to go to bed. I still have a hard time giving up on the day and admitting exhaustion.”

Working with Meek’s Cutoff director Kelly Reichardt for the second time: “You know the safety you feel when a man asks you to marry him? It felt like she doesn’t just want to date me. She wants to marry me.”

On the 19th century costumes, and peeing in public: “The dresses . . . I miss that. The only part of your body left exposed to the sun were your hands. My hands have aged at a rate disproportionate to the rest of my body because of being out there in the hot sun for two months. You couldn’t keep sunscreen on your hands; you were just sort of filthy all the time. But the dresses, they were ingenious for so many reasons. They actually do keep you quite cool, because they’re cotton, and they also provide cover. Privacy is important to women, and when you’re on the trail like that, so little is afforded. But with the dress, you can actually go to the bathroom in private. It provides an incredible shield. You could literally be in a conversation with somebody and just sort of drop down . . . I can’t believe I’m talking about this. I read once that when James Dean was feeling inhibited on set, he went off into a corner and urinated. I thought, How interesting! Then having that experience of peeing in private underneath the dress . . . [laughs] At first I was really scared. You’re out there in the desert all day. I mean, what are you going to do when you’re a girl? It’s hard. We were scared about snakes and all these creatures and critters, and it finally just became this weird joy to be out there, just stuck behind the bush . . . I can’t believe I’m still talking about this.”

Working with the camera: “One of the best things—and something I’m grateful for every time I walk onto a film set—is my six and a half years on Dawson’s Creek and the experience it afforded me in how to get comfortable with the camera. Best acting classes I ever took.”

[From Interview]

There’s a lot more in the piece at Interview – Michelle talks at length about Blue Valentine, which I still haven’t seen. Michelle talking about dreams and stories and stuff. In this interview, she sounded pretty substantial, so I’ll have to give her credit for that. Her words contradict the wispy vibe I get from her in photos and television interviews.

Oh, it’s great that she remembers her Dawson’s Creek roots! REPRESENT.

Photos courtesy of Interview.