SEIZING THE DAY

Actress Michelle Williams opens up about family, friendship and her return to the small screen in a story 'unlike anything I'd ever seen'

- GILL PRINGLE

Like many working moms, Michelle Williams knows what it means to juggle family life and professional ambitions - sometimes concessions have to be made. Such was the case when the 44-year-old actress first set her sights on bringing a thought-provoking series, Dying for Sex, to the small screen in 2022.

“I got pregnant - and it would be a hard show to make pregnant!” the Dawson's Creek alum explains, smiling.

Rather than going ahead with the project, she took an 18-month break, welcoming a second child with her husband, theatre and television director Thomas Kail, 48, in November 2022.

The very private couple - who met on the TV miniseries Fosse/Verdon in 2018 and married two years later - are parents of four: they also share son Hart (born in June 2020), a baby (delivered via surrogate earlier this year) and a 19-year-old daughter from Michelle's relationship with Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger. She raised Matilda as a single mom after the Australian actor's tragic death in 2008.

“[Motherhood is] really in the centre of everything I do, every choice that I make in the films that I do,” the actress said at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2017, musing on her priorities. “It’s in the centre of my life.” At the same time, she conceded that her feelings are undoubtedly universal. “That’s just what becoming a parent does to you.”

Happily, after Michelle's hiatus, Dying for Sex was still waiting for her - and, she explains, she couldn't shake her longing to take on the real-life narrative.