The bestJessica Williamsmovies and TV shows are not deep in quantity, but they have been incredibly impressive in her short time as an actress. Williams actually got her start as a teenager when she first appeared on the Nickelodeon television seriesJust for Kicksin 2006 when she was only 17. This soon led to her big break when she joined the cast ofThe Daily Showin 2012, which was huge for her since she was only 22 when she signed on there, the youngest correspondent ever on that news show.
It didn’t take long after that for the world of Hollywood to come calling. While she was still young and had little to no acting experience, she signed on for some movies and TV shows and ended up carving out a role as an actress. She has taken control of her career, as well, withone of her biggest starring roles coming in a movie that she worked as executive producer on(The Incredible Jessica James), andshe has since taken part in both the Harry Potter universeand a TV show with Harrison Ford.
Road House
Cast
Road House is a remake of the original 1989 film, which followed protagonist Dalton, a Ph.D. educated bouncer at the roughest bar in the south known as the Double Deuce. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Dalton, with two major changes including Dalton being a retired UFC fighter and the bar locale being in the Florida Keys.
In 2024, Jessica Williams joined thecast of a reboot of a classic Patrick Swayze action movie with the remake of Road House. In this new movie, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role Swayze played in the original. He is a former UFC fighter named Elwood Dalton, who is asked to take a job as a bouncer at an unruly roadhouse in the Florida Keys to help clean the place up. When he accepts, he realizes the biker gang running the place down works for a powerful crime boss who will do anything to hold onto his power.
Road House 2024: Every Replacement For The Original Characters Explained (& How They’re Different)
The 2024 remake of Road House replaces most of the characters from the 1989 original, and the new versions have a few important differences.
Jessica Williams stars as Frankie, the bar’s owner. In the original, the owner was a man named Frank (Kevin Tighe), but here, it is a woman who owns the bar and needs Dalton to help her save it. She is a great replacement since the crime boss, Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), making threats toward her ups the stakes even more, and it’s nice to see her in a positive, powerful role as a business owner, but not as a romantic interest.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
The second film in the Harry Potter prequel franchise, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald delves deeper into the machinations of the titular villain. With the dark wizard Grindelwald intent on sparking a war between magical and non-magical societies, it falls to magizoologist Newt Scamander and a young Albus Dumbledore to stop him.
Jessica Williams joined theFantastic Beastsfranchise with the second movie in the series,Fantastic Beasts And The Crimes of Grindelwald. Her role in this second movie was very small, and it wasn’t until the third movie that she got a chance to show what she was capable of. In this second movie, things shifted from Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and his adventures to more of a storyline with Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law)and the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen).
Lally was the Charms professor at the North American wizarding school, Ilvermorny. It was in this movie that she gave her faith in Nicholas Flamel as he was trying to warn everyone about Grindelwald’s plans for a rally in Paris, one which Newt and his friends showed up to try to thwart. As mentioned, she had a small role here, but it was nice to set her up for her bigger moments in the next movie, although the franchise ended after that without finishing the story.
Love Life
Love Life is a romantic comedy anthology series that traces the journey of various protagonists through different romantic relationships, encapsulating their experiences from first love to last love. Released in 2020, each season focuses on a unique character, with half-hour episodes detailing their individual relationship milestones.
The first television series in which Jessica Williams played a main role came in 2021 with the HBO Max seriesLove Life. In this series, Anna Kendrick stars in the first season, which shows her trek from her first romance to her last and how the people she meets along the way influence who she finds in the end. The show was set up as an anthology series that would follow a different person each season but HBO Max canceled it after just two seasons.
For her credit, the second season with Williams as one of the leads has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, up from 63% for the first season.
Jessica Williams appeared in that second season.She played Mia Hines, a character who found love with William Jackson Harper’s Marcus Watkins. While the first season was about Kendrick’s Darby, the second was about Marcus, who meets Mia in the first episode and has several relationships before ending up with Mia. For her credit, the second season with Williams as one of the leads has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, up from 63% for the first season.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
In the third and final installment of the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, the threat of Grindelwald grows ever larger. To defeat him, Albus Dumbledore recruits Newt Scamander, along with other talented witches and wizards, to fight Grindelwald and his acolytes before their plans to destroy the non-magic world come to pass.
While theFantastic Beastsfranchise ended up concluding early when there was still more story to tell, it also presented the first time that Dumbledore and Grindelwald went to battle against each other. It was also the movie whereJessica Williams went from a small supporting guest role with little to do and transformed into a fully formed characterwho joined the battle to go to war to fight against Grindelwald.
Fantastic Beasts 3 Cast Guide: Where You Know Every Actor From
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore has a large cast. Some were changed or had their roles minimized. Here’s a guide to who’s who in the cast.
Lally joined the army set up to help Dumbledore in his battle to stop Grindelwald’s rise to power in the wizarding world. In this movie, she meets Newt Scamander and joins them to battle Grindelwald’s followers in the streets. “I modeled a lot of her wand work after Serena and Venus Williams,“the actress saidwhen describing her character. “I like that she does this really cool, strong magic like she really means it.”
After a small role in the 2013 Vince Vaughn comedyDelivery Man, Jessica Williams signed on for a bigger role in the 2015 Jemaine Clement moviePeople Places Things. In this film, Clement plays a graphic novelist named Will, who is divorced from his wife, who cheated on him with another guy and only sees his twin daughters on the weekends. He wants more time with the girls, but his ex doesn’t think he can handle it, and he has to prove himself to both her and the courts if he wants to be a more active father.
Jessica Williams has a big role as Kat, an art student who Will teaches. She asks him to come to dinner at her place so he can meet her single mother, Diane (Regina Hall). However, Diane doesn’t respect her daughter’s art studies, Will’s career as a graphic novelist, or his struggles as a single father. The film premiered at Sundance and then was released to a nice 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with praise going to the cast and the script.
Booksmart
Booksmart is a comedy film directed by Olivia Wilde and follows two studious and by-the-book high school seniors who decide on their final day of school to shake up the formula and break some rules. Having lamented missing four potential years of fun and friendship, the best friends attempt to cram four years of the “high school experience” into a single night.
The best movie that Jessica Williams ever appeared in was the 2019 coming-of-age comedy-dramaBooksmart. Olivia Wilde directed the film about two high school seniors who have done everything right over their high school career and were both Ivy League-bound, but realize they missed out on having fun as teens. As a result, they decide to make up for all the fun they missed on the night before graduation, getting into all sorts of trouble along the way.
It’s a small role, but it is also a great performance from Williams as she plays a young and supportive teacher to the girls…
Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever star as the teens, Molly and Amy, butJessica Williams also plays an important role as Miss Fine.She is Molly and Amy’s favorite teacher at school, and she ends up giving the girls a ride to a party they want to attend. It’s a small role, but it is also a great performance from Williams as she plays a young and supportive teacher to the girls and someone who knows that they deserve to have a night of fun before moving on to college.
Girls
Created by Lena Dunham, Girls is a coming-of-age comedy-drama series that follows a group of four twentysomething-year-old girls now discovering that they’re on their own and must find their way through life. Central to the show is Hannah Horvath, who, after graduating college, is cut-off financially from her family. Hannah will soon discover trying to make it as a writer in Brooklyn is far more challenging than she thinks.
The first TV show that Jessica Williams took on as an adult after her role onThe Daily Showwas the HBO comedy-dramaGirls. The Lena Dunham series was critically acclaimed as a more unfiltered and honest depiction of adulthood from a female perspective, although it also had detractors for its more controversial depictions of sex and relationships. Despite that, its BAFTA and Golden Globe wins show that it accomplished what it set out to do.
All 6 Girls Seasons Ranked From Worst To Best
Lena Dunham’s comedy Girls had its share of highs and lows, but the series about young adulthood delivered a few terrific seasons in its six-year run.
Williams played a small part in the series, appearing only asKaren in four episodes. In season 3, she starred alongside Amir Arison and Michael Zegen as Hannah’s (Dunham) colleagues atGQ. One of the complaints aboutGirlswas that there were few women of color. Williams said she appreciated the role, saying, “Her show has always been put through a magnifying glass, and I always take it with a grain of salt. It’s her art and it’s her voice. It’s not her responsibility to write from my experience” (viaHuff Post).
The Daily Show
The Daily Show is a late-night talk and satirical news television program that offers a humorous perspective on current events, politics, and various social issues, often through a blend of scripted segments and guest interviews.
Jessica Williams became a star thanks toThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart.She became a correspondent when she was 22, the youngest person ever to play the roleon that specific comedy news series. She went on to appear on the show from 2012 to 2016 for 141 episodes. She also made a special one-episode return in 2024. It was here that she worked on and perfected her comedy timing and dialogue that she carried into her2 Dope Queenspodcast with Phoebe Robinson.
OnThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart,Williams became famous for her satirical news reports on topics such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. “In general, what I cared about were women’s issues, issues for people of color and LGBT issues,” Williams said about her time onThe Daily Show(viaNPR). “And so once I did that, then I felt a lot more confident about what I was doing.”
The Incredible Jessica James
The Incredible Jessica James stars Jessica Williams as an aspiring playwright in New York City navigating the aftermath of a breakup while pursuing her career ambitions. Directed by James C. Strouse, the film explores themes of resilience and self-discovery as the protagonist confronts various personal and professional challenges. Chris O’Dowd co-stars as a potential romantic interest, contributing to the film’s exploration of contemporary relationships and personal growth.
Possibly the most important movie role of Jessica Williams' career came in 2017 when she starred as the titular character in the filmThe Incredible Jessica James.Williams also served as the executive producer of the film,which sees her playing a strong woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend Damon (Lakeith Stanfield), but she is having trouble letting go, even spending a date with Boone (Chris O’Dowd) talking about her breakup and the problems with her ex.
In the end, this is not a movie about Jessica finding a new boyfriend or lover but is instead a movie about a woman trying to find herself and what she is meant to be in life. The film premiered at Sundance before Netflix acquired it for a streaming release. Critics praised the movie, giving it an 89% fresh rating and crediting the “star making performance” by Jessica Williams as a reason for its success.
Shrinking
In this series, a therapist grappling with personal tragedy begins to employ a radically candid approach with his clients and in his personal life. As he navigates his roles as a father, friend, and professional, his newfound method leads to unexpected consequences and self-discovery.
In 2023, Jessive Williams began co-starring in the Apple TV+ seriesShrinkingand finally got her first major awards recognition.Shrinkingstars Jason Segal as Jimmy Laird, a therapist who is grieving the death of his wife. He then takes on a very unorthodox manner of working with his patients, which involves him breaching ethical boundaries by telling them what he really thinks. Harrison Ford is also in the series as a senior therapist at the center.
Williams received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her performance in 2023 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
As forJessica Williams, she stars as Gaby, another therapist working at Jimmy’s center alongside him. Unlike Jimmy, who starts to bluntly give his thoughts to patients, Gaby is very empathetic, often to her detriment. She was also Jimmy’s wife’s best friend before her death and is very protective of Paul. Williams received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her performance in 2023 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
