15 years after earning an Oscar nomination for Blue Valentine, Michelle Williams recounts the ‘horrible’ experience where she actually lived with co-star Ryan Gosling.
The film from writer-director Derek Cianfrance (The Place Between the Pines) was critically acclaimed, earning praise for both Williams and Gosling’s raw performances.
They portrayed a young married couple named Dean and Cindy, as the film shifts the narrative between various points of their relationship, including the dissolution of their marriage.
Williams, 44, who was just a year removed from losing her partner Heath Ledger when filming began in 2009, opened up on the unique experience living with Gosling during a recent appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
The actors both agreed that to fully explore the depths of their characters’ relationship, they should temporarily live together, in a purely professional setting.
However, Williams described the experience as ‘horrible,’ since it also marked a major shift in the couple’s dynamic.
15 years after earning an Oscar nomination for Blue Valentine, Michelle Williams recounts the ‘horrible’ experience where she actually lived with co-star Ryan Gosling
They portrayed a young married couple named Dean and Cindy, as the film shifts the narrative between various points of their relationship, including the dissolution of their marriage
The film goes back and forth from Dean and Cindy being happy and in love to them being quite the opposite, with Williams explaining there was a ‘break in filming’ between those two halves.
‘We shot the first part when they’re young and in love and everything’s going really great, then we took a two-week break and we lived together,’ Williams explained.
She added it was more like, ‘office hours, 9 to 5, baby,’ and they were not actually cohabitating, but they did this so they could ‘destroy’ the loving couple they had built before their filming break.
‘We did these improvisations during the day, honestly, to figure out ways to annoy each other. And to destroy this thing that we had made,’ she admitted.
The actress continued that they originally weren’t going to take that break but added, ‘We were having such a hard time letting go of the thing that we loved.’
Director Cianfrance told them, ‘We gotta mess this up, and we need to burn it down,’ which lead to a bizarre ceremony.
‘And we did a ceremonial burned our wedding photo and then we learned how to annoy each other,’ Williams admitted.
When Shepard admitted that would have been very difficult doing that with someone you have just met a few months earlier, Williams admitted, ‘I know, it was horrible.’
The film goes back and forth from Dean and Cindy being happy and in love to them being quite the opposite, with Williams explaining there was a ‘break in filming’ between those two halves
‘We shot the first part when they’re young and in love and everything’s going really great, then we took a two-week break and we lived together,’ Williams explained; the stars seen at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
‘It was horrible I don’t want to give you reasons to hate me or come in obnoxious,’ she said, adding, ‘We were having such a good time the party has to be over so soon.’
Williams admitted she ‘really was,’ feeling the heartbreak in that second half of the shoot, adding, ‘[she] was younger then,’ and she couldn’t always leave those emotions on set.
Now at age 44, Williams said she is able to ‘close the door’ when filming stops.
‘A hard day at work for me now, I feel it and I go through it but I definitely know that I get to go home. I can really close the door on it,’ she explained.
‘When I was younger it would definitely seep under the door.’
While Williams didn’t reveal where she and Gosling lived together, scenes for the film were shot in both Brooklyn, New York and Honesdale, Pennsylvania.
Blue Valentine was released in December 2010 and reportedly earned $16.6 million at the worldwide box office.
It first premiered at that year’s Sundance Film Festival before making a splash at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.
She added it was more like, ‘office hours, 9 to 5, baby,’ and they were not actually cohabitating, but they did this so they could ‘destroy’ the loving couple they had built before their filming break; Gosling seen in April 2024
When Shepard admitted that would have been very difficult doing that with someone you have just met a few months earlier, Williams admitted, ‘I know, it was horrible’; the co-stars seen in 2010
It was controversially given an NC-17 rating seemingly due to one scene that depicts Gosling performing oral sex on Williams.
He famously slammed the ratings board as ‘sexist’ and the film’s rating was later downgraded to rated R.
Williams went on to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Cindy in the film, though she ultimately lost to Natalie Portman for Black Swan.
Both Gosling and Williams earned Golden Globe nods for their performances.
