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The first thing that strikes you about Katie McGrath, and what secured the actress her biggest roles to date, is the silky mane of dark hair and classic, pale facial features. What started her on the path to stardom, however, is a little further south.
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“They were all over Times Square, I was like, ‘Yes, that’s me, those are my boobs, hello,’” she laughs, referring to publicity posters for The Tudors television series. The image featured the lead actor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, sitting on a throne, surrounded by three women visible only from the neck down and dressed in cleavage-accentuating period gowns.The drama was shooting in McGrath’s home county of Wicklow and she had blagged a job in the wardrobe department. Having never even considered acting or modelling, she was approached on set about doing the billboard and press photos. “I was like, ‘Alright. Are you going to pay me?’” she says, casually. “I’m the one in the purple [dress].” The publicity shots led senior crew members to suggest McGrath give acting a shot. With no drama classes, she secured an agent. And in just over a year, she had a recurring lead role on Merlin, the popular BBC series that would run for five years. It sounds like a fairy tale, but she took it in her stride.
The Ashford native landed the wardrobe job because her mother thought it was unacceptable for the then 23-year-old to be unemployed. Having completed a history degree at Trinity College, McGrath was at sea. She had worked during university as a cocktail waitress, in a tattoo studio and as a make-up artist. “I was the worst student ever,” she says with a grin. One needs to eat, I proffer. “This is what I was thinking,” she agrees. “And one needs to have a good time, was also what I was thinking.”
After college she got a job on Image magazine, but quit because it wasn’t for her. Fortunately, McGrath’s mother had a friend working on The Tudors who found her a job.
“He was like, ‘She’s worked on a fashion magazine, she can work in costumes.’ I was thinking, ‘He obviously does not understand the difference between the two because I can’t thread a needle and I have no idea what to do with these 150 priceless costumes that [the head costume designer] Joan Bergin has had flown in from Italy,’” recalls McGrath.
“They’re going, ‘Just turn up a hem.’ And I’m like, ‘Can’t sew, can’t thread a needle, what can I do?’ I didn’t have any concept of what it was I was going to be doing. I thought I was just going to lace girls into corsets. I was so bad at it. I ended up just working with the women and dressing them. It was the most fun I’ve ever had. It was the summer of freedom, of no responsibilities and just having a laugh.
“Because it was a first season on a TV series and there was a big cast, they were young as well, we became mates. I saw all that and was like, ‘Yeah, [acting]looks like a laugh.’”
McGrath started writing to Irish agents. One of them agreed to send her for an audition and she got the part. She stayed on the agent’s books doing bit parts for a year, before acquiring a confidential cast list from a crew member on The Tudors. This included UK agents and she fired off more letters. She signed to a London agency in October 2007, did a film and pilot episode, and had moved to London and was reading for Merlin by January. McGrath regards the fantasy series as her “baptism of fire”.
“It was everything. They told me 2,000 girls were considered for the role, and I’ve no idea how I managed to get that one,” she says. “Everybody else got to make their mistakes in drama school; I got to make my mistakes on screen for everybody to see. But you know, we all have to learn somehow. It was my first job. I did very much feel like I had the most to learn and I was making the most mistakes.
“The great thing about Merlin is my character got really good about [season] four and five.
I was ready for it and capable,” she adds. “I always tell the producers they didn’t cast me for the first three years — they cast me for what I could do in four and five. ‘Look at her, she’s going to make a great bitch, we’ll hold on to her for three years and then we’ll give her her shot once she’s ready.’”
McGrath exudes devilment, and it’s easy to see how she charms casting directors and producers. She is “the world’s worst drunken texter” and has a tattoo that reads “Purity” running across her lower back. “Katie means ‘pure’ in Greek,” she says, standing up to show me. “It’s not a comment on me as a person.” She whips out her phone and shares a few photographs of herself and fellow Irish actress Victoria Smurfit planting kisses on each other.
The images are linked to her forthcoming and most high-profile role yet: that of Lucy Westenra in a new television adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing the title role. “Plot spoiler: there’s a little bit of a frisson between me and her character, so I was sending pictures saying, ‘This is what I did today with the extremely beautiful Victoria Smurfit,” says McGrath in an accent that is more “actor” than any specific region. The 10-part drama will air in the autumn, on NBC in America and Sky Living on this side of the Atlantic.
“I thought there is no way that I will up doing a job with Jonny,” says McGrath. “Even though we’ve been mates since The Tudors, that seemed like too weird a move on.” Yet the Lucy character — described as having a penchant for gossip, flirting and glamour — is perfect for her. Even denying the rumours of a past romance with Meyers — and Colin Morgan, her co-star on Merlin — is accompanied by a beaming smile. The Dracula casting director, however, didn’t initially see McGrath’s potential.
“The whole time [the auditioning] was going on, they kept telling me I was wrong for it because they wanted a 21-year-old blonde ingénue, who was obviously a virgin. I was like, ‘Really!?’” says the 29-year-old, incredulously, pointing at herself. “The casting director was going. ‘I just don’t see it.’ And then I’d do this reading and I’d get further and further.
“It got right down to the end and it was between me and another girl. She was an extremely beautiful, blonde, tall, leggy 21-year-old. I was like, ‘Yeah, they’ll go for that one,’ the Irish girl in the corner, going, ‘What’s going on?’ Then when they gave it to me, I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ They said, ‘Yeah, but you have to go blonde.’”
However, the make-up designer refused to do it. She said the actress’s dark locks couldn’t take the peroxide and she’d have no hair left by the end of it. “There were moments there when I almost lost the job,” says McGrath. A compromise was reached. The actress wears a wig on the top of her head and just the underside of her own hair is dyed blonde. “It’s very east London,” she grins, flicking her hair over to display the contrast.
The strong Irish showing among the cast is a coincidence but McGrath likes to think Stoker, a native of Dublin, would have approved.
“In the book, Lucy is your typical high-society girl, but the epitome of sweetness and niceness. Her death is what precipitates the entire story, and her transformation into a vampire,” explains McGrath. “In this version, she’s more catty, a sort of mean girl, but still [the lead female character] Mina’s best friend and very loving to Mina — in more ways than one.”
The actress is enjoying the saucy character, but sex scenes are never easy. “It’s f****** horrendous,” she says. “But that’s your job. When you read a sсript and that’s what makes sense, you do it. Sometimes it’s just that they want to see tits. Then I’m like, ‘That’s not the point of it.’ But I’m a girl. It’s never easy.”
An American network production, Dracula is more about the illusion of sex, and McGrath’s tattoo has proven an unexpected aid. “[The make-up artists say] ‘Ah, we can’t cover it, we don’t have time, so Katie you’re going to have to put your clothes back on.’ ‘Yes, I am!’” she smiles triumphantly. Many people come to regret teenage body art but, for McGrath, everything tends to just fall into place.
Dracula airs on Sky Living in the autumn