Well, the dress is certainly attractive enough, but it’s getting to where I dread covering Michelle because the only thing I can think of to say is about her hair. So I’m endeavoring to get it all out of my system now, so that come Sunday at the Globes, we can have a fresh conversation for once. Deal? Deal. Anyway, Jessica and I were wondering if her hair essentially silver now because of a role she’s filming, so she looked it up, and I gather Michelle’s current project is a movie about PT Barnum co-starring Hugh Jackman, Zendaya, and Zac Efron.

[I was all set to riff on that until I realized that I will totally go see it, and Jess savvily pointed out that it’ll be good for Zefron to do a film that presumably doesn’t — although I guess it could — focus on him being a total beefcake. And it then sent me down a rabbit hole of remembering the musical Barnum, which I saw on the West End with Michael Crawford before he was the Phantom. I remember getting balloons in the audience, and in one scene, he walked a tightrope across the stage, which was awesome; apparently it was on Broadway first with Jim Dale and Glenn Close, so tomorrow is going to be devoted to hunting down and comparing various soundtracks. You heard it here first.]

AHEM. Anyway: We’ve gone on at length about how severe the hair can get on Michelle, and in this outfit it’s almost gotten to the point of being contrasting metallics. (“Siiiiilver and gooooold,” Burl Ives just purred from the great beyond.) I was wondering if she changed it so dramatically from Manchester By The Sea in part to cover anything she might’ve tweaked on her face, because in repose her eyes seem a trifle wider than they once did, and the coif lets us feasibly say, “Oh, it’s just that her hair is wrong right now,” and move along.

Michelle Williams

But when she smiles everything seems fairly normal, so what the heck do I know. Maybe the problem is that Michelle’s smile is really warm, so when she’s without it — or offering it timidly — it brings a cool breeze onto the entire outfit. I don’t quite know. Her makeup is good, the dress is nice, the shoes are shiny. With her Manchester bob, I would love it. I guess I just need to accept the dye job and MOVE ON.

[Photos: Getty]