TheFosse/Verdonstar is standing up for herself and for Gwen Verdon.
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Williams didnt imitate Verdon so much as light the stage lights within her.
If Fosse is the person you know, Verdon is the one youre watching.
But Williams hasnt seen her own meme.
Its so much to play, Williams says.
She would accentuate a sentence where a normal human being wouldnt.
How is she going to sit on that chair?
How is she going to collapse?
How is she going to wipe away a tear?
She had a sense of who people wanted her to be, and she wanted to deliver.
And Williams delivered Verdon: Shes up for anEmmyfor the role.
Her nature is so opposite of mine.
And Im going to have to expand myself as a human being so you can play her.
Fosse/Verdonwas originally titledFosseand based largely on Sam Wassons biography of the same name.
But in talking toFosse and Verdons daughter, Nicole, the shows writers rethought its focus.
Greatest dancer of her time and shes setting up the tables and the chairs.
What did she do?
She wiped the blood off of her nose and kept moving, Williams says.
That kind of determination I think I relate to.
When I got out of television, it felt like a stain on you, she says.
It was hard work to erase it and to ask to be looked at in a different new way.
Scripts come at you and you have no say.
What made the offer to doFosse/Verdondifferent: equal pay, which also meant a larger say.
That didnt just mean money, but also the respect that comes with it.
Money, as Williams has been exploring recently, means more than just money.
I started to feel like,Can I drop these other colors into the solution without polluting it?
InFosse/Verdon,we see Verdon make such accommodations all the time.
As Fosse immortalizes himself withAll That Jazz, she operates in the background, accommodating, ameliorating, surviving.
Had Verdon lived today, would her contributions have gotten more respect?
This is one of those questions that makes Williams close her eyes and concentrate.
I think so, she says.
I thought the world was the world.
I didnt ever expect things to be fair.
I didnt 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 theyre the Gwen Verdons of their own relationships.
