Watching sex scenes with your parents is cringe-worthy enough. But imagine you’re appearing in them, and your dad is stoic NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. That was the scene at the Williams house recently when Allison, 23, screened her upcoming HBO series Girls for her family. “I watched it with them all the way through,” says Allison, a Yale grad who landed her first major role in the Judd Apatow-produced raunchy comedy that premieres April 15. “I just had to worry about pulling the brim of my brother’s baseball cap down during some of the scenes.” Those scenes include Williams’ character pleasuring herself in the bathroom at her gallery office, but she admits that creator, director and co-star Lena Dunham does the “heavy lifting” in that department. “We’ve known it was coming,” says the anchor. “She knows I don’t consider any of it real. … But it’s also, for a young actress, a very exciting time.” The elder Williams seems less enthusiastic about other family members watching the show. Says Allison, who has appeared on such series as The League and Funny or Die’s Will & Kate: Before Happily Ever After, “My dad keeps joking about sneaking into my grandparents’ house and switching out their HBO for PBS so they think I’m on Downton Abbey.”
