Beauty Mag Praises Brian Williams, The Source of 'Sterling Breeding'

December 4th, 2014 2:00 PM

In the December issue of Allure magazine, Allison Williams – daughter of NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams – claims that playing Peter Pan was her dream role. The live musical/nepotism event airs tonight. When journalists asked her what her dream role would be, she said she’d be happy “playing a boy in the early nineteenth century who doesn’t grow up, who’s sort of nebulously asexual.”

It’s clear (if understated) that Williams has “connections” to thank for her acting career. “Shortly after graduating from Yale, she moved to Los Angeles and decided it was time to make good on her lifetime goal of becoming an actress. She considered her connections, many made via her father.” She also wears “a Rolex that was a college-graduation gift from her parents.”

Allure writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner manages to boost both daughter and father in her cover story.

It’s tempting to think of Williams as the character who made her famous [on HBO’s Girls]: perfectionistic, ambitious Marnie. There’s her sterling breeding [?], her grace, her good and thoughtful listening, the knowledge I have deep in my bones that she’ll write me a thank-you card when this story comes out. There’s the fact that she doesn’t do nudity on a show in some ways known for it.

But there is also something askew here, a humor and a sense of self-awareness. It’s a gift she gets from her father. Just as Brian Williams can pivot on the thing he knows he is – a newsman, with the stiffness that implies – and then appear on Jon Stewart or Seth Meyers and be the funniest guy in the room, so can his daughter. On the topic of that nudity, she jumps on a “never nude” reference with a deadpan “I’m like Arrested Development” without missing a beat.