Girls actress Allison Williams will play the title role in NBC’s Peter Pan Live!, which airs Thursday, December 4 at 8/7 c.

The live special will be narrated by Minnie Driver, who is also cast as the adult character Wendy. Christopher Walken will play Captain Hook.

Commenting on the role, Williams, 26, said, “To most of America I’m going to be a new face, which is part of what’s exciting about it for me. To those people, I’ll be Peter Pan.”

Williams, the daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, added that she and her grandmother used to act out Peter Pan when she was little. “She was Wendy. My grandfather was Captain Hook and I was Peter, obviously. She would sew my shadow on,” Williams remarked. “She was very, very excited. And then they came to the studio and saw me fly, which was really sweet.”

Here is a Peter Pan Live! promo:

While Williams is best known for her portrayal of Marnie Michaels on the Lena Dunham comedy Girls, she is not seeking to distance herself from the risqué HBO series.

Williams revealed that Dunham was on of the first people she called after landing the Peter Pan role – “She was on location with show executive producer Jenni Konner. And the scream I heard was deafening.”

Williams on Girls:

Williams added, ”’Because they’ve heard me talk about these scripts I get sent. There have been things I was excited about but didn’t get. There were things I was excited about but couldn’t do. I’ve spent the last four years with these people and we’ve all been talking about what’s next for us. And they both said, ‘This is better than what we could have dreamed for your next thing.’ And it was exactly how I felt, but it was so meaningful to hear it from them.”’