Tribune Magazine - December 7, 2008

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What Katie Did

Heard the fairytale about the wardrobe girl who became a sorceress? Patrick Freyne talks to 'Merlin' star Katie McGrath.

"I thought my life was going to be completely different," says Katie McGrath, the 25-year-old Irish star of the hit BBC television programme Merlin. "The first thing I ever wanted to be was a backup singer for Guns 'n' Roses." She digresses into a discussion of Guns 'n' Roses' long-awaited album Chinese Democracy, before adding brightly: "Hey! Maybe they need a backup singer now?"

She's only joking. Katie McGrath has her dream job. She's regularly on our television screens riding horses, wearing medieval ball-gowns and generally going slowly and subtly evil, alongside the cream of British acting talent (Anthony Head and Richard Wilson to name just two) on the BBC's Saturday-night family drama Merlin. Merlin tells the story of characters from the King Arthur mythology in their younger days, and Katie plays Morgana.

"I was never planning to be an actress," she says. "I hadn't acted much. I'd been in school plays, but I wasn't a drama-school kid and my family aren't performers. I was a strange child. I was the kid with funny hair listening to dodgy music. I was from Ashford but I went to St Andrew's in Dublin and I'd come in with my hoodie and skate-shoes, with purple hair under the hood. I got away with it because I spent all my time in the art room, so they figured I was 'artistic'. I was that kind of kid, listening to Green Day and the Deftones and all that kind of thing. Then I went to Trinity to do history. I wasn't the biggest fan of college because I was so desperate to get started on life. I went for four years but I never really physically went. I'd turn up to hand in my essays but that was about it. I worked fulltime. I worked in a piercing studio. I was a make-up artist. I worked in a cocktail bar."

This restless streak continued after college. "I just floated along as most people do," she says. "I ended up working for Image magazine. I always loved fashion and clothes and all that kind of stuff, but it wasn't the kind of fashion I wanted to be involved in, and after about eight months of it I decided it really wasn't my thing. My mum's best friend was one of the top first-assistant directors in Ireland. He was working on The Tudors and she rang him up and asked was there anything I could do there. And he said, 'Yeah, she worked in fashion, so she can work in costume!' Well, I can't sew! I'd never done it before and there I was on my first day in a room full of extremely qualified people and 300 period costumes.

"It was feet-first, in at the deep end and trying to swim. And it turned out to be great fun. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. They're all amazing people and I was working under Joan Bergin who's possibly one of the best costume designers in the world. It was fantastic but I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just floating along, being myself."

And then, possibly because she was so good at being herself, people started suggesting she try being other people as well. "A couple of the directors and producers on The Tudors suggested I try acting," she says. "I didn't take it seriously at first, but then, to be honest, I started looking at all the actresses, and while I was getting up at half four or five in the morning, then spending two hours lacing up corsets, I'd look over and could see these actresses sitting there under an umbrella having tea brought to them. And I thought 'That does look easier,'" she laughs. "Of course, I was completely wrong about that. Acting is hard work, but it prompted me to send out my headshot and a really dodgy letter to all the agents in Ireland. One of them picked me up and got me a part in Damage for RTé, which was unbelievable for a first job."

Then when The Tudors returned for its second season, McGrath got a small part in it, and she found herself with her old crew egging her on. "Some days I have to remind myself I'm not crew," she says. "I have to stop myself from fixing things that aren't my job to fix and I'm really, really careful with my costumes. And when I started on The Tudors as an actress, the crew were really good to me. One of the drivers gave me the confidential cast list and on it were all the details of the actors' agents. And that's how I got the agent I have now. That was October last year. I read for Merlin in January and my whole life essentially changed. In the space of 10 days, I'd moved to England and got a new job. It's been very full on."

The Merlin job almost didn't happen at all. "My agent rang at one point and said, 'There's a slight problem... they're looking at another actor who's also Irish.' They were talking about Colin [Morgan who plays Merlin]. They didn't want two Irish accents in it, and she rang me back and said, 'Okay. Colin's in London, so he's going to come in and read it in an English accent, but if he can't do it, then I'm afraid you have to come over and nail it in an English accent. Otherwise they can't use you. So I spent the whole weekend fretting about it. 'Did he do it? Did he do it?' When I got the call on Monday to say, 'Yup his accent's fine', I was so relieved. My English accent is actually okay, but I couldn't handle the pressure of having to do the audition again."

And so, Katie ended up playing Morgana, the ward of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon (played by Anthony Head), who, King Arthur fans will know, ends up turning into an ever-so-slightly evil sorceress over time. "Morgana has this amazing story arc to get through," she says. "That's the great thing about this show – everybody knows where the characters end up; Arthur becomes king, Guinevere becomes queen, Merlin becomes very powerful and my character becomes this evil sorceress. She's the ticking time bomb of the show. We've all got an end point, but in a way the writers can do almost anything to get there. And my character gets better and better as time goes on."

Right now, filming for Merlin season one is finished and the series finale is to air next Saturday (13 December), but Katie has her fingers crossed that a second series gets commissioned. She's also due to appear in Paddy Breathnach's new horror film Freakdog, which is out next year. She may have drifted into acting almost accidentally, but she's got no shortage of ambition. "I'd love a career like Kate Winslet," she says. "She makes blockbusters; she makes weird movies; she still has a family and she seems really grounded."

In the meantime, she's still coming to terms with her newfound success. "My uncle called me up recently and said 'Katie, I have a favour to ask.' It turns out my little 10-year-old cousin is the biggest Merlin fan. So my uncle said, 'Is there any way you could come over for dinner?' So I said, 'Of course', and turned up and my cousin was just speechless with excitement. And then she was asking me all these questions about the show. It was like Christmas morning for her. It was really sweet, but at the same time, it was really strange. I was like, 'I'm only your cousin!' And at the end of the day, it's just a job!"

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@темы: Katie:interviews, year:2008, tv-show:Merlin, tv-show:The Tudors