In the canon of Hollywood friendships, Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps’ relationship looms large.

Sure, there’s Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, too. But there’s something about the longstanding closeness between Williams and Philipps that trumps them all. They met on the set of Dawson’s Creek and have been inseparable ever since, through the highs, the lows and all the other in-between things that make up the stuff of life. If Williams is nominated for an award, Philipps is on her arm. If there’s a project Philipps is working on, like her husband’s I Feel Pretty, then Williams will cameo.

“I’m so in love with her,” Williams has said. “She’s proof that the love of your life does not have to be a man. That’s the love of my life right there.” 

Last night, Williams finally made an appearance on Philipps’ new talk show Busy Tonight in a hilarious appearance to promote her new television series Fosse/Verdon. In the show, Williams stars as Gwen Verdon, the most famous Broadway dancer of all time alongside Sam Rockell as Verdon’s director and creative partner Bob Fosse.

As the pair held hands on Philipps’ couch and finished each other’s sentences (“This is what it’s going to be like when we’re old,” Williams joked), Williams revealed that she took the job on Fosse/Verdon because it promised “equal pay”.

“We had just come off of that very dramatic moment in time,” Williams explained, referring to the drama surrounding All The Money In The World’s pay discrepancy between her and co-star Mark Wahlberg. “And when they came to me about this project and that [equal pay] was a part of it I was so moved to see that something had shifted so dramatically that it wasn’t even, it was just there. Alongside reading the script there was this promise of [equal pay].” 

But the best part of Williams’ appearance on Busy Tonight was when the friends hopped into a sauna to dish the dirt on all the Hollywood stars who have crossed their paths over the years.

Matthew McConaughey? He thinks that Philipps’ first name is Whimsy.

“We were at a party for something for Brokeback Mountain, you and me and Heath [Ledger] and Marc [Silverstein, Philipps’ husband], and up walks Matthew McConaughey,” Williams recalled. 

“He said,” and here, Williams launched into a pitch-perfect impression of McConaughey’s drawl: “life’s good, work’s good, everything’s good… So cool.” 

“When he said goodbye to us, he said, ‘Heath and Michelle, best of luck to you in the coming weeks with Brokeback Mountain,’” Philipps added. “Marc, it was lovely to meet you. Whimsy, it was lovely to meet you too. Like he got Marc’s name and he got to me and he was like, it’s something weird, it’s something weird, what is her name? Whimsy! It came to him.”

The friends also reminisced about the time they chatted up Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill at the Golden Globes. “Talking to Leo was like giving me all my preteen feelings,” Philipps recalled.

She added: “Remember, we thought maybe that they were going to invite us to hang out?” (“They didn’t,” Williams interjected.) “And then we realised that we were, like, women in our mid-30s.”

“Mums,” Williams joked.

“And they were very nice to us! I remember Leonardo DiCaprio laughing at something I had said and then looking at me and it was like, the first time maybe ever in his life he had looked at a 38-year-old woman and really looked at me. And I did feel like in that moment that he looked at me and he was like, ‘Oh she’s not, that’s not bad, that’s OK.’” 

Images: Getty