Michelle Williams -- the singer -- has had enough.
Michelle Williams -- the singer -- has had enough.
The 40-year-old Destiny's Child member recently went on Instagram Live to stress that she is not Michelle Williams the actress, after she said she's been receiving lots of comments on social media directed at the 39-year-old former Dawson's Creek star. Williams the actress won an Emmy on Sunday for her role in Fosse/Verdon, and gave a passionate speech advocating for pay equality, specifically for women of color.
Williams the singer hilariously pointed out that she's black, and couldn't understand why so many people were mixing up the two.
"How come when y'all are tagging and congratulating a person, do y'all see that I'm black?" she asks, clearly annoyed. "When you go to my profile, you go to search 'Michelle Williams,' I am black. OK? I ain't mixed with nothing, I'm not mixed with Persian, Russian, I am black."
"So I am trying to figure out why in the world I am getting cursed out in my comments for Michelle Williams' speech, which I thought was her truth, which I thought was awesome," she continues. "I thought she was factual -- could be wrong -- but yeah, I just told a woman a few minutes ago on my Instagram, I was like, 'I'm so sorry that my namesake upset you, but can't you see that I'm black?'"
Williams the actress won her very first Emmy on Sunday night and used her platform to call out pay equality. Last January, she herself made headlines when it was revealed that she made just $80 a day for reshoots on the film All the Money In the World, while her co-star, Mark Wahlberg, received $1.5 million.
"I see this as an acknowledgement of what is possible when a woman is trusted to discern her own needs, feels safe enough to voice her needs and is respected enough to be heard," she emotionally said during her speech. "Thank you so much to FX for paying me equally. Because they understood that when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value. And where do they put that value? They put it into their work. And so the next time a woman, and especially a woman of color -- because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart -- tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her. Believe her. Because one day she might stand in front of you and say, 'Thank you,' for allowing her to succeed because of her workplace environment, and not in spite of it."
Meanwhile, this isn't the first time the two Williams have been mistaken for one another based on their name. Williams the actress told ET in December 2017 that she had an awkward mix up with her namesake when she took her daughter, Matilda, to a Stevie Wonder concert.
"Yes, we often get confused for each other," she shared. "Let me tell you when I really got confused ... for that other Michelle Williams, when I took my daughter to see Stevie Wonder. They were like, 'huh?'"
She went on to explain that they thought the other Williams would be the one in attendance.
"They were like, 'Oh, ohh ohh ohh... OK cool,'" she hilariously recalled.
Watch the video below for more:
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