The Oscars are five months away and everything is still up in the air. The Sag-Aftra strikes mean that actors can’t only not make films but are also banned from promoting them. This, combined with the WGA strikes, means that release schedules are more in flux than at any point since Covid. What’s more, some of the most-anticipated movies of the year have been enormous commercial flops. What Hollywood needs is something to repair all the fractured bonds. What it needs is a new Oscar category for audiobook narration, and Michelle Williams needs to win it.
If you’ve been even remotely online over the last few weeks, you will know three things. The first is that Britney Spears has released her memoir, The Woman in Me. The second is that Justin Timberlake comes out of it abysmally, not least because he reportedly thought that the best way to soothe his girlfriend in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic secret abortion was with his own talents as a singer and guitarist. The third is that Michelle Williams has narrated the audiobook of The Woman in Me, and she clearly doesn’t like Justin Timberlake very much.
A portion of the book has already gone viral. It’s a moment where Timberlake runs into the R&B singer Ginuwine and greets him in a manner so mortifying that it could destroy sphincters from 20 paces away. “Oh yeah, fo’ shiz, fo’ shiz. Ginuwine! What’s up, homie?” Spears records Timberlake as saying. Now, written down, that paints a staggeringly good picture. You can see Timberlake, then a pube-headed boybander. You can see all the mannered affectations in his gait. You can see the overbite.
But what Michelle Williams does with this line is art. Her delivery of the line has already spread far and wide across the internet. Not only does she put a decent amount of mustard on the line, and not only does she sound exactly like Justin Timberlake, but she is also fearlessly editorial in her choices.
nothing can prepare you for these 15 seconds of michelle williams doing a justin timberlake impression as written by britney spears pic.twitter.com/QCXnDmnQIL
— lucy (@heylucymay) October 24, 2023
There is a way to deliver the line “Oh yeah, fo’ shiz, fo’ shiz. Ginuwine! What’s up, homie?” and still sound vulnerable. It could be delivered in the manner of someone who knows how far down the credibility ladder he is and desperately wants to fit in. But this is not how Michelle Williams delivers the line. No, Michelle Williams delivers the line “Oh yeah, fo’ shiz, fo’ shiz. Ginuwine! What’s up, homie?” as scathingly as a person can ever deliver the line “Oh yeah, fo’ shiz, fo’ shiz. Ginuwine! What’s up, homie?” Her Timberlake sounds entitled and oblivious. It’s hard to believe, but in Williams’ hands it sounds even more excruciating that it looks written down.
And this is almost certainly deliberate. Williams does soft impersonations of other figures in the book, and they’re all treated with immense sympathy. Another clip, of her reading a tract about Mariah Carey, has also gone viral. The actual text is relatively nothingy – it’s about the time that Carey taught Spears how to use a ring light in a way that captured her most flattering side – but Williams purrs the dialogue. Again, you’d know if Williams didn’t like Carey, because ordering people to only take photos of you from a specific angle is what you do if you’re an out-of-touch diva. It would be so easy to paint Carey as vacuous and image-obsessed, but Williams imbues her Carey with something warm and maternal. It’s beautifully done, but it also underlines just how much she must dislike Timberlake.
Michelle Williams needs an AWARD for this Britney audiobook okay?!
— Niccara. (@niccaracampbell) October 24, 2023
Her mimicking THE Mariah Carey has me weak okay?!
What has me more weak is this is also how I would feel too meeting Mariah Carey. pic.twitter.com/z4fMuciUAM
During a period when actors are much less visible than usual, a performance like this reminds us all of everything the craft is capable of. And yes, while all the audiobook awards are technically handed out during the Grammys – Viola Davis won for hers last year, finally securing the G in her Egot – Michelle Williams deserves more than that. She deserves to win an Oscar for her impression of Justin Timberlake on one page of the audiobook version of Britney Spears’s memoir. In fact they should make a film about her recording of the audiobook version of Britney Spears’s memoir, and Michelle Williams should star in it, and win another Oscar for that. That’s how good she is. Fo’ shiz.
This article was amended to recategorise Ginuwine as an R&B singer, rather than a rapper.
