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Actress Allison Williams is ready to play the iconic Peter Pan
When Carrie Underwood made her TV musical debut as Maria von Trapp in NBC's smash-hit remake of The Sound of Music, the unforgiving internet collectively decided to compare her to the one and the only Julie Andrews in the role.
"Plain and simple: Mean people need Jesus," the country music superstar responded on Twitter, where her biggest critics gleefully mocked the top-rated live event and picked apart every aspect of Underwood's brave performance.
Now it's Allison Williams' turn to face a tough crowd — and she's hoping for the best. The star of HBO's Girls, who plays the youthful hero in Peter Pan Live!, airing Thursday at 8 p.m. EST, hinted to The Daily Beast that she's expecting a bit of flack — it comes with the territory — but she predicts the cynics will melt once they give in to the sweet, silly spectacle of it all.
"I have full faith that this will happen," said Williams. "People will hear the opening strings of music that they know deep, deep down in their heart, and it will make them nostalgic again. And they'll crumble. And they might get one hate-tweet out really quickly, and then we won't hear from them for a while — because they'll have been sucked into the sense memory that hopefully will be Peter Pan."
She continued: "I will say this about last year: Today's audiences like to watch things cynically. And I'm on a show that's cynical in tone so I'm no stranger to that. ... Hate-watching is a thing. It's a whole way of watching something, and it's not an audience that's natural to a non-cynical performance. Peter Pan, you cannot watch cynically. If you do, you're going to hate it, no question: It falls apart instantly."
The 26-year-old multi-hyphenate actress, who's engaged to College Humor founder Ricky Van Veen, revealed fine vocal chops in a Mad Men-themed 2010 viral video and frequently flaunts her talent as aspiring singer-songwriter Marnie Michaels on Girls.