Ashley wrote a short film called STUD BOOB, which Shaina Feinberg directed. Her sister, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, and Ashley star in it together.

Ashley Williams’ short film “MEATS” premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

I’d been counting. The phone in my back pocket buzzed for the tenth time. Or was that eleven? I still didn’t reach for it.

My choice to write, direct, produce, and star in MEATS, came about because I wanted to explore how the relationship between humans and their meat-based food is affected if you stare your food in the face.

Odie, 14 months old and wearing only a diaper, grabs the flesh of my calf for stability and stomps his feet in the mud, sending specks of it all the way up to my cheeks. He’s delighted. But I don’t watch him.

“SHIT.” I look down and see that the hands-free breast pump has completely filled the bottle on my left breast.  Milk is spilling onto my leg.  In the backseat, my 8-month-old son, Odie, is screaming.  Hungry.  And we are in a rush, barreling down the freeway hoping to pick up my three-year-old from preschool before we’re charged a late fee.

My mom, Linda, died this past November after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. I was 16 weeks pregnant with my second child on the day of her funeral.

I’m just hungry, I thought. And dizzy. My overnight bag from a trip to Pop Pop’s house was getting heavier by the step and Gus, now almost two and a solid 30 pounds, hung on my hip.

When I was a teenager and begging for independence, my dad taught me how to drive in the empty car lot of an amusement park. Playland’s most famous attraction is a classic wooden ride called The Dragon Coaster, which takes its cars through a tunnel resembling the serpent’s body, complete with roaring sound effects and fake smoke.

This past summer an obstetrician in a crowded pub in Hudson, New York, told me I was crazy. She saw my swollen belly and asked who my doctor was — I told her I was having a home birth and she nearly spilled her (large) glass of wine.