Cristin Milioti, Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actress interviews

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Over the past two months of Emmy campaigning, Gold Derby has spoken with several contenders in all categories. Now with voting underway ahead of the July 15 unveiling of the nominees, we have compiled 11 interviews for stars vying for Best Limited/Movie Actress, including: Jessica Biel (The Better Sister), Kaitlyn Dever (Apple Cider Vinegar), Meghann Fahy (Sirens), Meagan Good (Terry McMillan Presents Forever), Ari Graynor (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story), Cristin Milioti (The Penguin), Lola Petticrew (Say Nothing), Natalie Portman (Lady in the Lake), Amanda Seyfried (Long Bright River), Phoebe-Rae Taylor (Out of My Mind), and Michelle Williams (Dying for Sex).
Read on for highlights from each interviews and links to watch our full video Q&As.
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Biel plays Chloe, the estranged sibling of Nicky (Elizabeth Banks), who are forced to come together after someone they know is murdered on the Prime Video series.
She opens the show wearing an iconic white dress covered in blood, and she laughs, "There's always something really interesting about being covered in blood. I feel like I do a lot of that in my work. There's a weird combination of things that happen to you. But specifically, that dress was chosen for that reason — that stark white color and that bright red color."
Watch our complete interview with Jessica Biel.
Dever plays the conniving Belle Gibson on the Netflix series in the same season she played the vengeful Abby on The Last of Us for HBO Max.
She says, "When I first read Apple Cider Vinegar, I was so mind-blown. I just couldn't believe someone would go through that much to do that kind of thing. The amount of lives that she affected by lying about having brain cancer is just so horrific and terrible. I have such a personal relationship with cancer, and so I just was furious. And so yes, I was wondering that myself, how I was going to take that fury and turn that into what I ended up doing. What I found with our writer, creator Samantha Strauss, is that she was someone that just was desperately craving love and community and would do anything to get it. Getting to discover a little bit more about her background and where she comes from and how she didn't really receive a lot of love, or the love that she wanted growing up, I think that that was helpful for me to keep in the back of my mind while playing her.
Watch our complete interview with Kaitlyn Dever.
The Netflix series focuses on Devon (Fahy), a struggling addict who is concerned about her sister Simone's (Milly Alcock) outwardly creepy relationship with her new boss, a billionaire socialite named Michaela (Julianne Moore).
Molly Smith Metzler "did an incredible job of writing these characters in such a way that there's real strength and grit and true moments of sisterhood,' Fahy says. 'Devon and Simone are often ripping each other's heads off, only in the way that sisters can do. You can say the meanest thing when there is no filter because it's your sister. So creating these moments of raw vulnerability, softness, quiet, and sadness — I just was like, 'Oh my God. I want everything to do with all of it.''
Read our complete video interview with Meghann Fahy.
In the Lifetime film, Good portrays Carlie, a resilient police officer, cancer survivor, and single mother of two who finds herself opening up to a second chance at love when she meets Johnnie, played by Taye Diggs. Johnnie, a military veteran. He falls deeply in love with Carlie, helping her rediscover the possibilities of connection and healing.
Having recently experienced her own new chapter of love with her husband, Jonathan Majors, Good found herself drawn to Carlie's journey. "I wanted to discover it with her," she explains. "There are parts of her story that I understand so intricately. I wanted to bring it to life in a way that empowers women, makes them feel strong and hopeful, and inspires them to believe in love again. To believe in everything life has to offer in every season — and to embrace it unapologetically."
Watch our complete video interview with Meagan Good.
Graynor plays real-life attorney Leslie Abramson for the Netflix series from Ryan Murphy which brought the Mendendez case back into the spotlight.
She says, "It was very important to me to honor her way of being, her essence, her cadence, the way she moved, the way she gesticulated. She didn't have quite an accent, but there was a very specific way that she spoke that felt very important to me to differentiate her that felt so important to her spirit, and yet it was just subtle enough. l was afraid that people were going to be like, "What are you doing?" It was really something that I struggled with. But I think at the end of the day, there was a certain amount of faith that when you're also doing the psychological deep dive work, with what was available to me historically and in her book, but then also my own interpretation of what that means, I think, hoping and having faith that that would provide the foundational element of artistic expression that is not just a mechanical impersonation."
Read our complete interview with Ari Graynor.
Milioti plays Sofia, the former boss-turned-adversary to the Penguin (Colin Farrell), a presumed psychopathic killer recently released from Arkham State Hospital in the HBO Max series.
The role also took a physical toll. "I'm not a stunt person," she jokes. "I'm really getting slammed and dragged! There were also very specific emotional states that I had to stay in for hours at a time. I'm even reticent to call that a challenge because I was so excited to be asked to do that. If anything, the challenge was wanting to make sure that I really landed her story. I really wanted to calibrate everything so that you see how she's driven mad."
Watch our complete interview with Cristin Milioti.
For the FX series, Petticrew didn't shy away from "dancing in those gray areas" in their portrayal of the controversial Dolours Price, who came of age during the height of the Troubles, a 30-year period of conflict and violence in Northern Ireland that started in the 1960s.
"A character like her is not somebody that often leads a show," says Petticrew, who was last seen as Julia Louis-Dreyfus' terminally ill daughter in the 2024 film Tuesday. "What she does to a lot of people will be quite hard for an audience to get on board with and understand. As an actor, I had to really… leave all moral judgment at the door."
Watch our complete interview with Lola Petticrew.
The Oscar winner stars as Maddie Schwartz, a housewife-turned-journalist in late 1960s Baltimore who becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram), a Black woman who was found floating in a reservoir.
"It was definitely the most challenging shoot of my life, but also the most rewarding," declares Portman about starring in and producing her first series. "Because I was producing, it was really just like a train rushing quickly when we were on it, and troubleshooting in between shooting and it was incredible because Alma dreamed big and always had incredible ideas and just to make them a reality and to deal with the many challenges that came up with such an incredible work."
Watch our complete interview with Natalie Portman.
For the Peacock series, Seyfried's character, Mickey, is a beat cop who must track down a killer preying on vulnerable women while simultaneously searching for her estranged sister.
"The way Mickey's written is somebody who's in flux. She's in a constant internal struggle because she's trying to get through her days and life keeps coming at her. She's just flawed. Her generational trauma has manifested in so many ways to try to keep her safe," Seyfried explains. "I want to portray that because I think it's realistic and necessary to talk about certain things that she's struggling with."
Read our complete interview with Amanda Seyfried.
A pivotal step in the adaptation process for Disney was casting Melody, a nonverbal girl with cerebral palsy, played by Taylor.The team behind the project, including Taylor, joined our recent group discussion about the movie.
'When I was about 7 or 8, I read the book in school and I loved it,' she recalls. 'I've never seen a character like me before. ... I remember I came home that day and I screamed to my parents, 'My God, guess what, I found a character like me.'' Years later, that early connection became a life-changing opportunity. 'Even now I have no words for it … this has been the most unreal three years of my life and the best three years of my life,' she shared. 'I've learnt so much ... and now I've got a confidence that I'm really grateful for.'
Watch our complete interview with Phoebe-Rae Taylor.
Williams plays Molly Kochan for the FX limited series, which chronicles Molly's journey of self-discovery after she's diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer — with her best friend, Nikki (Jenny Slate), at her side through it all.
She says, "What it really speaks to is how passionate female friendship really is, and that it's much more of a love relationship than a friend relationship. It's not a casual thing. It's a life-sustaining thing. We both come to it from our own best friendships, and we know what those have meant to us over the years. And so to see this brought out and made central in a storyline was something that we had both had experience with, and both wanted to make larger."
Watch our complete interview with Michelle Williams.
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