64 new york | august 19–september 1, 2019
TheCULTUREPAGES
atively since then. “I was afraid of putting
myself in a position where I was going to
commit to something and then eventually
be asked to do something that I didn’t want
to do,” she says.
What made the offer to doFosse/Verdon
different: equal pay, which also meant a
larger say. Williams was coming off the
experience of reshootingAll the Money in
the Worldwith Christopher Plummer after
Kevin Spacey was replaced amid sexual-
abuse allegations. She agreed to a small per
diem for the additional shooting days, while
her co-star Mark Wahlberg was paid
$1.5 million. When the discrepancy became
public, it put Williams at the center of a dis-
cussion about equal pay in Hollywood, and
when FX made the offer forFosse/Verdon,
Williams was promised that she and Rock-
well would have equal salaries.
Money, as Williams has been exploring
recently, means more than just money. It’s
a way, as she puts it, to buy “choice, free-
dom, peace, quiet, downtime.” Though she
has built her career sinceDawson’sCreek
on smaller indie dramas, including a string
of Kelly Reichardt movies set in the Ameri-
can Northwest, she also took a role in the
superhero filmVenom. She hasn’t given up
on smaller films, recently appearing in
After the Weddingwith Julianne Moore,
but having money has allowed her a few
months off beforeVenom2to spend with
her daughter, Matilda, whom she had with
the late Heath Ledger. “I used to really
believe in work being a pure thing, but
I don’t know how practical that is or how
worldly that is,” she says.
InFosse/Verdon,we see Verdon make
such accommodations all the time. Even
after vocal-cord surgery, she stays inChi-
cagofor the money, and she’s always plan-
ning out a future for her daughter. As
Fosse immortalizes himself withAllThat
Jazz,she operates in the background,
accommodating, ameliorating, surviving.
Had Verdon lived today, would her con-
tributions have gotten more respect?
“I think so,” Williams says. “I didn’t expect
this much out of life, being a woman. And
in the last couple of years, that started to
shift.” Williams herself has contributed to
that change. She has heard from people
who told her they’re the Gwen Verdons in
their own relationships. “To see her get the
recognition that she deserved,” she says,
“makes them think about how to ask for
the recognition that they deserve.”
Recently, Matilda found a hat online
that read #gwen, got inspired, and asked
Williams to buy it for her. “Could there be
anything cuter than your daughter wear-
ing a hat with your character’s name on
it?,” Williams says and smiles. ■ PHOTOGRAPHS: PREVIOUS SPREAD, AUGUST. THIS PAGE, COURTESY OF FX NETWORKS.time collaborator, who is trying to smooth
over the fact that he has seduced Verdon
while his wife is deathly ill. It’s a ridiculously
outsize gesture that’s nevertheless fitting for
a character whose whole life is theater.
But Williams hasn’t seen her own meme.
She doesn’t watch any of her own work,
though she agrees to let me show her a clip
of someone mimicking it in tribute, pro-
vided I cover the part of the screen with her
performance. She doesn’t quite remember
why she moved her hand the way she did,
other than that she and the director,
Tommy Kail, had been talking about the
way Verdon would prepare to play herself
in public and in private. “She had a sense of
who people wanted her to be, and she
wanted to deliver,” Williams says. And Wil-
liams delivered Verdon: She’s up for an
Emmy for the role.
Unlike Verdon, Williams in person
appears in no way theatrical. She arrives at
the tourist-filled midtown hotel bar where
we’re meeting for coffee and tea, with her
trademark blonde bob, a white frontier-ish
dress that resembles something anyone
could be wearing in gentrified Brooklyn,
and her fingernails painted black. The way
she talks about playing Verdon makes it
sound as if she experienced a nine-month
possession by a particularly extroverted
ghost. “I want to be a tiny little ball as a
person, and when I started researching
this, I was like, Fuck, this is going to be good
for me,” she says. “Her nature is so opposite
of mine.”
Williams was familiar with a little of Ver-
don’s career going in, including her star turn
in Damn Yankees, but not its full breadth—
from shows like New Girl in Town and Can-
Can through Sweet Charity and Chicago.
She went through rigorous dance rehears-
als to learn Verdon’s steps and worked with
a Juilliard dialect coach on Verdon’s pecu-
liar mid-Atlantic accent. Before each scene,
she would refer to a collection of clips of
Verdon’s various press appearances, which
she organized by date to make sure she cap-
tured the variations in her voice over time.
Fosse/Verdon was originally titled Fosse
and based largely on Sam Wasson’s biogra-
phy of the same name. But in talking to
Fosse and Verdon’s daughter, Nicole, the
show’s writers rethought its focus. The
series treats Verdon and Fosse as creative
partners, though in ways that weren’t tra-
ditionally given the same level of respect.
Verdon didn’t think of herself as a chore-
ographer or director, Williams tells me,
but she had a talent for managing the
mood on set, for explaining ideas that
Fosse struggled to articulate, and for
smoothing things over with the producers
with whom he fought. “Somebody told me
that she would get to the dance space early
and set up the tables and chairs,” Williams
says with awe and a little sadness. “Great-
est dancer of her time and she’s setting up
the tables and the chairs.”
Verdon started her career at a young age,
mastering tap and ballet as a child before
getting the opportunity to tour with Jack
Cole’s dancers. Williams herself started act-
ing as a teenager, with roles in things like
Baywatch and Lassie, while emancipating
herself from her family. Williams’s need to
keep moving may be what initially made
her hesitant to do Fosse/Verdon. Sixteen
years and four Oscar nominations since the
end of Dawson’s Creek, on which she first
became famous for playing the troubled
and alluring Jen Lindley, Williams was still
reluctant to return to television, even
though the medium has blossomed cre-Rockwell and Williams in a still from Fosse/Verdon’s viral crying scene.