Mckenna Grace | Catching Up With the Rising Star

Being 16 isn’t easy. Studying for school exams, learning how to drive, trying your best to find yourself and figure out what your passions are. Throw ‘managing a hefty handful of creative projects’ in there and you’ve got an average day for Mckenna Grace.

The actor known for her roles in I, Tonya, The Haunting of Hill House, and Captain Marvel has been busy. Recently she’s worked on A Friend of the Family, The Bad Seed Returns, and the fifth season of the critically acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale. When she’s not on a film set, she spends her time writing and producing songs. The four songs she’s released on streaming services have already garnered her millions of listeners. Although she has a lot on her plate, she’s managing it gracefully, pun intended. 

Flaunt caught up with Grace to talk about her budding music career, her latest television and film projects, and more. 

Can you tell me about how you got into music and when you first started playing instruments and writing songs?

I've always been into music. My dad, he plays guitar. He's an orthopedic surgeon, but he plays guitar and stuff for me whenever he comes home and he always tried to teach me but I'd be like, no, I don't want to learn dad. Now I'm like, I do want to learn. Can you teach me? But he's always playing Nirvana and Foo Fighters on the guitar for me. And I really always loved it. But, you know, he was kind of my first introduction to other music than Taylor Swift. Looking at my mom…

Mckenna’s mom: It was awesome!

It was awesome but I mean, there's so much other music out there. Just like how there's not only Hallmark and Lifetime movies out there. But yeah, my dad always showed me a ton of fun music and he's super into heavy metal and stuff like that. So I don't know, I just kind of grew up listening to stuff with my dad. But over the pandemic, I found that I got really into music, and back in 2018, I think was whenever I picked up a ukulele. Ever since then, I've been really into learning ukulele and collecting them. Right now I'm trying to get better at guitar and piano. I've just always kind of been a creative person.

What does your dad think about the music that you make?

I think he likes my music. I don't know, I never want to say that he loves it or anything. That makes me sound rude, but I think that my dad likes it.

He's a big Nirvana fan, what does he think about your song “You Ruined Nirvana''?

He thought it was really fun. I remember I was so excited because I wrote it in my living room and I was so excited for him to come home because I had my producer over and he was mixing because I have like this whole setup over in this room where there's like a bunch of like speakers and microphones and stuff, because I'll have a producer come over and we'll just make it here. I was so excited. I was like, oh my God, you have to stay for whenever my dad gets home from work so that I can play it for him. I'm so excited. It's all the music that he’s showed me. 

Do you think that being an actor has helped you tell stories through your songs?

I'm a writer, for sure. I love writing scripts and songs and stories. So maybe I think so, yeah. I think that maybe it's helped with the storytelling aspect of music.

Could you describe your sound? I've listened to several of your songs and I feel like they all kind of sound a bit different. Are you just playing with different genres right now?

Honestly, I think I'm just messing around. I don't know who I am as a person. I don't know who I am as a musician. I'm just messing around. I think there's so many cool things to explore. But I kind of like that kind of punk pop type of deal. But I don't know, I'm still figuring it out. But yeah, I think that I am kind of messing around right now. And it's fun to just create music just to create it and then see where it ends up. 

What's the process like trying to find yourself both in regards to music and just as a person?

No clue! I'm still figuring that out. It's interesting. I was having this conversation with my mom this morning. I was like, what is going on? Life is just so crazy. And she's like, you know, you'll just grow into yourself. You'll figure it out. But I mean, who knows? It's kind of fun though. That's the interesting part about life and growing up is that, I feel like you feel like you have it all figured out whenever you're really young and then you go into like a teenager and you're like, whoa, everything is so different. Especially whenever you're stuck on a global pandemic for two years. But I feel like there's a lot going on, but as long as I'm just enjoying what I'm doing at the moment, I feel like you don't need to figure out who you are. Because you're always going to be a different person at different points in your life. I'm not the same person I was last year and the year before that or even a couple months ago, so I feel like we're always going to be different at different stages in our lives. And that's what's weird and interesting about life is that nothing's ever the same. 

Have you performed any of your own songs live yet? 

No, that would be so cool. That's like on my little ‘before I turn 18’ bucket list. I'd love to perform live somewhere. Even if it's just like a really small crowd or something. I just feel like that seems so cool. I don't know. That's just so cool. I have a karaoke machine over there and I love just randomly turning it on and I'll get out the instrumental tracks to my song and I'll go around my living room singing to my instrumentals of my unreleased music and stuff. And I’m like, yeah! This is a total concert song! And my parents are like, Okay Mckenna, I'm trying to watch my show. 

Tell me about how you wrote Bad Seed Returns with your dad.

My dad and I write scripts together and we wrote Bad Seed 2 together. And it just got made and it should be coming out pretty soon. But that was a really, really cool experience.

How weird is it playing a character that you helped write?

It's really interesting. It's nice because I'm writing the character so I can write myself like a cool scene that I've always wanted to do. Or it's just cool because you aren't interpreting someone else's character. But you're getting to play it exactly how you imagined it.

You seem to have a lot that you're working on right now and that's coming out soon. What are you most excited for people to see?

There's a lot going on that I'm just so excited to be a part of. I'm really excited about what I've been shooting over the summer, A Friend of the Family, because it's a real-life story of Jan Broberg. There's actually a documentary on Netflix about it called Abducted in Plain Sight and it's so insane and interesting. And I'm honored to be a part of telling her story. The new season of Handmaid's is coming out, which will be crazy and I'm super excited to be a part of that. I don't know. There's just so much going on. And I'm really happy and grateful for it.

What role has been the most challenging for you over the past couple years and these past projects you've been working on?

Honestly, it might be Ghostbusters because I find that I do so much dark, heavy stuff so it was really exciting to do something more comedic and action-packed and stuff. But it was especially hard because of how dry my character was. And our director, Mr. Jason Reitman, had a very—he was also the writer of the script—so he had a very specific vision of what he wanted her to be. I also had a specific thing of how I wanted the character to be, so it was like us having to really work together to create the character, which I think I'm really happy with the finished product, but it was definitely challenging at the time.