Clara McGregor on Working With Her Dad and Her TV Debut With Ryan Murphy
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Clara McGregor is easily scared by the horror genre, but even she couldn’t resist the charms of Ryan Murphy and his smash series “American Horror Story.”
“I haven’t watched every single season purely out of my own fears and anxieties, but I have seen a good amount of it,” she says, adding that she’s becoming quite the fan.
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So it was fitting then that the 26-year-old daughter of Ewan McGregor and Eve Mavrakis would make her TV debut in the most recent season of the series.
In “American Horror Story: NYC” Clara McGregor plays KK, one third of a lesbian gang alongside Sandra Bernhard and Quei Tann in early ’80s New York City.
“It was a really interesting time for lesbians. I think there was definitely a big uprising or a big movement of gay bars, but that was mainly kind of gay bars for men, and I think lesbians were trying to find their way in there,” McGregor says. “And so I think KK and the gang are just trying to fight to be represented as well as the men at the time with the community. So yeah, KK is tough, but I think she’s got a heart of gold. I like her.”
The role came via an audition from her agent, and after she did her self-tape she tried her best to forget about it and not get attached.
“There’re a lot of tapes going around and I try never to get too attached. Once I’ve taped for something, I kind of just put it away,” she says. “But then I got a call from my agent and I was booked on it, so that was very cool.”
McGregor says she was interested in acting at a young age but, as many in her place tend to do, shied away from it given her father’s profession.
“I was always in school plays and always had an affinity for film and theater. It’s something that in my early teenage years, once moving to L.A., I wanted to take a backseat from,” she says. “I’m not sure if that was just the general pressures of everyone in L.A. is an actor and that’s something that my father does and all that. So I started studying photography. I actually went to college for photography, but after my first year I took an acting class and I caught the bug all over again.”
She promptly changed her major to cinema studies and starting taking acting classes outside of school as well.
Over the pandemic, she started her own production company called Deux Dames Entertainment with friend Vera Bulder, and will next be seen in a film called “You Sing, I Sing Louder,” in which she stars with Ewan. The story is a father-daughter tale of a road trip, where the father is taking his daughter to a rehab facility without her knowledge.
The film is in post-production so McGregor wants to stay tight lipped, but she says acting with her dad was “very exciting.”
She created the production company in response to the uncertainties of the industry’s future during the pandemic, but it’s also provided a chance to tell the kinds of stories she’s become interested in.
“We didn’t really know what the future of our industry looked like, and so we just decided to start a production company for many reasons. One of which to try and generate and create projects for ourselves, but mainly to hold some space in the industry and hopefully try to make space for narratives and stories that aren’t told enough, stories about women, stories about the LGBTQIA+ community, and finding more of a voice within the industry,” she says. “We’re hopefully going to keep putting out content that we enjoy as well and that we think is important.”
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