Information Diet: Allison Williams

Specs Age 24 Accomplishments Stars on HBO’s Girls (Season 2 returns Jan. 13); guest stars on Fox’s The Mindy Project on Nov. 20; Yale grad Base New York What’s the first information you consume in the morning? I use my phone as my alarm, and when I go to turn my alarm off, I also check my email, texts and voicemail. Often, I’m still half-asleep when I do this. What do you read or watch or listen to at the breakfast table? My homepage is NYTimes.com, so I’ll cycle through the headlines and see what’s going on. I wish I could say my second stop involved Quantum Physics or Rosetta Stone to hone my Farsi, but it’s JustJared.com. Then I’ll do a Drudge/HuffPo sweep. I also listen to podcasts like Bloomberg Edu, which is my mom’s radio show about education. What occupies your mind in the car, on the subway, train or bus? My time in the car is spent trying to surreptitiously sing without anybody being able to tell. I employ a number of different techniques: my nondriving hand up near my mouth as a sort of shield, pretending to talk on the phone (when I’m rapping, obviously), having my hair hang around my mouth...I go to great lengths. Are you a TV junkie or on an airtime-restricted diet? I am such a TV junkie that this is almost a difficult question to answer. I watch all my programs in a mixture of live, DVR and on my laptop. Here is a troubling compilation of [ed. note: this list has been condensed] what I watch: American Horror Story, American Idol, The Bachelor(ette/Pad), Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Community, The Daily Show, Dexter, Downton Abbey, Family Guy, Game of Thrones, Girls, Glee, Homeland, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show With David Letterman, The Mindy Project, Modern Family, NBC Nightly News, New Girl, The New Normal, Parks and Recreation, Rock Center, Saturday Night Live, Sherlock, Smash, True Blood, Veep, The Voice, The Walking Dead, 30 Rock, 60 Minutes. I know. Before bed, do you bite into a novel, graze on Twitter or fast until morning? I read before bed. I have trouble sleeping as it is, so I try to keep my eyes on a page rather than a screen. I read a lot of magazines (New York, The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic) and scripts, or I’ll read a book. Which is more nutritious: print or Web? It’s a tie. It’s all about keeping a balanced diet. Give us the skinny on your favorite app. I love Sonos because it plays music throughout the apartment, Uber for a special treat when I really need to get somewhere and Evernote so I can keep track of everything. With such a bloated media universe, how do you cut out the fat? I don’t know if I even cut the fat. I just keep opinion and perspective in mind as I read things. I find myself nostalgic for a time when some things were just true or false. I’m starting to sound like Will McAvoy on The Newsroom, but that’s how I feel.

Convergent TV

Information Diet: Allison Williams

The Girls star taps into a DVR full of must-see TV, from American Horror Story to 60 Minutes

Emma Bazilian

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Emma Bazilian