Last year when Allison Williams was doing the talk show circuit to promote Girls, she made a point of letting everyone know that producer Judd Apatow decided to hire her after seeing her sing a version of the Mad Men theme song on YouTube. But it wasn’t until last night, well into Season 2, that we saw her actually sing. And she was notably terrible. Is this Judd Apatow’s version of a long con?
For those of you who missed the open wound that was last night’s episode, Allison’s character Marnie hijacked her ex-boyfriend’s tech party to sing a song of her own creation. Director/star Lena Dunham describes it as a “weird slowed down, sexed up song.”
Here is some video of Lena Dunham explaining the scene from last night’s Girls episode for HBO:
And here’s the YouTube/Mad Men video that was her most notable achievement before Girls:
Clearly you can see from the Youtube video that Allison can actually sing. But at the same time, the hand gestures and mannerisms share an awkwardness that seems innately part of Allison’s personality. It works really well for her comedic scenes on Girls. Lena calls her the “Michael Scott” of the cast.
But was it that intersection of attractive, awkward and self-conscious that drew Apatow to Williams? Maybe!
And if there wasn’t enough awkward tension in that scene last night, you have to hand it to Lena Dunham for turning up the awkwardness one more notch by casting Allison Williams’ real life boyfriend Ricky Van Veen as a partygoer who cringes through her performance.
Ricky Van Veen does not appreciate Allison Williams’ singing. #girls vine.co/v/bwjzWMh7w6P
— Meghan Keane (@keanesian) March 11, 2013
Let’s hope he didn’t hang around on set for her desktop sex scene that followed this moment…
