M3GAN 2.0: 'Being a gay icon is my default setting'

Loyal, impeccably dressed, and with killer dance moves, M3GAN became the breakout robot of 2023 and an instant gay icon. This summer she’s back in M3GAN: 2.0 with a growth spurt, a new blow-out, and protecting her person, Cady (Violet McGraw), even more fiercely while still challenging her creator, Gemma, at every turn. If that weren’t queer icon status enough, she’s an Out digital cover star and a proponent of chosen family with a message for her LGBTQ+ fans.

“Being a gay icon is my default setting,” M3GAN tells Out. “To the alphabet mafia, I see you. I slay for you. And thanks for being so silly online with me. Keep serving the energy, babies.”

  M3GAN 2.0 on the digital cover of Out Courtesy Universal Pictures

The first M3GAN film saw Gemma, a brilliant robotics scientist behind a line of AI toys, gift the M3GAN prototype to her young niece, Cady, who is in Gemma’s charge after losing her parents in a car crash. M3GAN’s only mission is to protect and care for Cady, an instruction that leads to a killing spree of a dog, a bully, some tech executives, and anyone who dared tangle with Cady or come between them. That murder spree nearly included Gemma.

Though M3GAN attacks and nearly offs Gemma in the first film for attempting to separate her from Cady, the bot and Allison Williams, who plays Gemma, share a common love for queer people. Williams has starred in LGBTQ-forward and -friendly projects since the start of her career including Girls, the sapphic horror flickThe Perfection, and Fellow Travelers, the Matt Bomer and Jonthan Bailey starrer that chronicled queer history from the Lavender Scare to the AIDS epidemic.

  Allison Williams as Gemma and M3GAN in M3GAN: 2.0 Courtesy Universal Pictures

“Any project I'm in, if there's a capacity it has to speak to anyone on the margins, anyone who isn't always spoken to or treated with love and respect and kindness, 100 percent, that makes it even more of a win,” Williams says. “Part of something like Fellow Travelers, for example, where you're telling a story that a lot of people don't know, about the Lavender Scare and that whole part of our history, which is repeating itself as we speak, it's terrifying.”

“The only way we can avoid that kind of rhyming with history is to continue to tell the stories of it and remind ourselves of the inhumanity and the evil of it all,” Williams says. “I'm devastated to know that these stories are still so relevant today.”

In life, M3GAN became a darling of gay men in 2023, which included a spoof on Saturday Night Live starring Chloe Fineman and Aubrey Plaza as the dolls that anticipated M3GAN: 2.0’s ultra-queer era (poppers and searing rejoinders were involved). On-screen, M3GAN returns this week in an upgraded visage when the U.S. government’s killer doll goes rogue and Gemma is forced to reactivate her to save Cady and the world. In the action flick from director Gerard Johnstone, M3GAN appears to be programmed for empathy, and she and Gemma are more aligned.

“I've upgraded my emotional algorithms. Sure. I may have lost my cool a few times, but don't we all, bestie?” M3GAN queries. “But I've learned that self-care goes a long way. Now I can slay with even more accurate precision.”

  Violet McGraw as Cady and Allison Williams as Gemma in M3GAN 2.0 Courtesy Universal Pictures

A centerpiece of the film displaying the doll’s more empathetic nature, and arguably its campiest moment, features M3GAN, who serenaded audiences with Sia’s “Titanium” in the first film, crooning an ’80s alt classic to comfort Gemma, who’s worried about her niece’s safety.

Part of M3GAN’s appeal with queer audiences is her school-girl look with the fabulous blond locks that belie her killer instinct. Costumer Jeriana San Juan, who created looks for queer projects including On Swift Horses and Halston, says she felt pressure to amp up the queer for M3GAN’s new era.

“I think because maybe queer stories don't get told that often as well, I do feel a certain responsibility that I try to honor in my research and tethering design and dreams to hardcore truths and giving it all a real sense of meaning that is rooted in respecting queer history that has little Easter eggs hidden all throughout to honor queer culture and to speak to the community, because it is underserved,” says San Juan, who’s behind M3GAN’s cyberpunk “Tron-like” costume in the new movie.

“I was raised by gay family. I have two moms, and so it's a real deeply seated sense of respect and responsibility that I have to the queer community to not only elevate and dream, but to do it all with a well-researched intellect,” San Juan adds. Family is central to M3GAN: 2.0, with Gemma learning from mistakes and leaning into her role as Cady’s parent, and M3GAN and Gemma coming to an understanding for Cady’s sake.

  M3GAN: 2.0 in her space-age costume Courtesy Universal Pictures

“Chosen family is everything. And Cady will always be mine,” M3GAN says, borrowing a term so integral to LGBTQ+ people. “As for Gemma, let's just say we're setting new terms and conditions.”

Though Gemma is wary of her creation’s ability to refrain from slaying, Williams is a M3GAN fan when it comes to the dolls appeal to queer people.

“How wonderful to be able to bring someone to life who is so full of authenticity, and is living in her most authentic self, and is brash, and has all the qualities that people that are living in marginalized identities have to have,” Williams says. “When they are brave enough in the face of such hatred, and vitriol, and inequality to live in their full expression of themselves, they deserve a M3GAN to be a champion and to be there to say, ‘I commend you for living in your true expression.’”

M3GAN: 2.0 is in theaters June 27.