Allison Williams has captivated audiences on screen for years, but motherhood has brought her into uncharted territory: toddler tantrums, sleepless nights, and the unexpected ways raising a child reshapes your sense of self. In this candid Q&A, Williams talks about anxiety, societal pressures, parenting in the modern world, and the lessons that have made her a more grounded, empathetic mother.
Meet the expert:
Allison Williams is an actress, comedian, and podcaster best known for her breakout role on Girls and her starring role in The White House Plumbers. Beyond acting, she co-hosts a podcast where she dives into the real, often messy, experiences of modern parenthood, exploring everything from identity and career to the joys and challenges of raising a child.
Liz Tenety: I always like to start by asking my guests about the kind of before and after of motherhood for them. So what surprised you about becoming a mom?
Allison Williams: I think I was surprised by a lot of the actual delivery stuff. Pregnancy felt a little bit like I was expecting it to, which is sort of weird to hear. I mean, no one can ever prepare you for the feeling of the baby moving around, but I had a pretty mild first trimester. I was really lucky. But then my anxiety started to get really bad maybe two weeks before I delivered. I wasn’t really paying attention to it because at that point, when your body’s felt like someone else’s and so estranged for so long, it got harder and harder to diagnose what was a deviation from the norm and what was just normal for the circumstances.
I couldn’t believe how anxious I was, and I had postpartum depression, and I just felt very suddenly unable to be the mom that I always pictured myself being. But over time I got there, and now I feel the way I wished I could have felt at the beginning. Because it’s not like I have any more expertise about who he is today than I did about who he was on day one—you’re still basically dealing with a new kid every couple weeks. It’s just having to do with what’s different inside me. I think that’s really the big thing that’s changed.
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Liz Tenety: Parenting today seems so different from when previous generations raised kids. How do you navigate that?
Allison Williams: We are parenting and living in an ecosystem that never existed before. There’s so much information, so many products, so many opinions. News is no longer consent based in a way that it used to be, and I think that has like completely changed my ability to handle it. Now I’m constantly getting served news content, and it’s jarring also as a parent to be constantly veering back and forth from like, it’s time to size up in the pajamas, and then you’re just scrolling that website and suddenly out of the corner of your eye, you see a headline that’s, like, apocalyptic, and you’re like, great, well I guess we still need pajamas, so I’m just gonna keep doing this while my nervous system is contending with that.
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Liz Tenety: How do you talk to your son about issues like privilege, inequality, and fairness?
Allison Williams: I think about that a lot because obviously one of the early versions of privilege that our son will experience is the fact that his existence and his life doesn’t necessitate a lot of hard, uncomfortable truths about human behavior from an early age.
I do feel like it’s unfair for his peers who look different and have to understand the ways racism functions in our country and socioeconomic inequality and religious discrimination. It’s only fair to also include him in that knowledge base, like, pretty soon in support of the people around him that will be contending with it firsthand.
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Liz Tenety: You started a podcast with your friends. How did that come about?
Allison Williams: I formed this group chat while I was still pregnant and was going through the registry list. Rather than asking [about baby gear] in all these different text exchanges, I just put everyone in the same group. So we were asking each other stuff like, my kid has wide feet, what shoe brand I look at? And from there we started to divulge more vulnerable stuff, like, Someone just had to pry my child outta my hands at preschool drop off. Like, am I destroying him?
And then one of our friends who is a therapist who spent a lot of time with young men as patients and the other who is an early childhood educator were sharing their perspectives, and it was just so valuable. And so the idea of starting a podcast with the three of us came up, and the rest is history. It’s been the most incredible experience. It’s been great to try to puncture the balloons if “supposed to” and “should” and try to chip away at the “perfect” version of this. ‘Cause there’s no such thing.
Liz Tenety: You also recently acted in Regretting You, based on Colleen Hoover’s book. How does your experience as a mother influence your perspective on roles like that?
Allison Williams: I was fascinated by her approach to motherhood. It feels like I can relate to her, but also we’re very different parents. That tension, between who you are and what motherhood requires, is something I feel personally.
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Liz Tenety: Motherhood comes with a lot of societal pressures. I’m wondering if you could talk about this idea of us as mothers when sometimes we do have to put our dreams on hold in the reality of raising kids and what that feels like.
Allison Williams: We’ve kind of put ourselves in a position culturally where you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you go back to work, people will tell you you’re neglecting your child and they’re growing out without a mom. You don’t go back to work and you stay at home, they’re like, they don’t have a model of a working mom. How dare you? And it’s like, oh, wow. They’ve really got us in a pickle here.There’s no winning.
What I’ll say is, I believe in so many things, but the number one thing I believe in is that I care about the quality of the life of the women in my life that are moms, and I want to make sure that they know that they have options. And it’s appalling to me that we have the policies we do about paid parental leave and childcare. We should be raising children in villages together, and we’re just expecting people to do it completely on their own.
Liz Tenety: What’s your superpower as a mom?
Allison Williams: I think communication with our guy is kind of my superpower. I love talking to him, and I’ve been talking to him since he was in my belly. And 1763060020 we just have long talks that I cherish. I do think that’s kind of my superpower.
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