Actress pens play about life with a famous sibling
Wren pens play about life as the kid sister of an international rock star
For two-thirds of her life, Nicola Wren worried almost every time she met a new person: “I’d think, ‘Does this person know? Who’s told them? What if they found out? What do they think about me already?’”
The elephant in the room was nothing grave or humiliating. In fact, it was something of which Wren is deeply proud: Her big brother Chris is frontman to Coldplay, and he happened to be married to Gwyneth Paltrow, too. But it did occasionally make things awkward.
“It was taking up a lot of my thoughts, probably not necessarily, but even the first time I did the Edinburgh Fringe, I’d meet people and someone knew someone who knew someone who’d told them,” says Wren, 28, an actress and writer. “It was only in the last couple of years that I realized (not talking about it) is really quite tiring.”
Wren’s real surname is Martin, of course, but a few years ago, she changed it in order to give herself the “mental separation” to forge her own path. (She saw La Reine on a Pizza Express menu and thought “Wren” had a nice ring to it.)
And for years she did just that, resisting the temptation to call on any connections Chris or Gwyneth could have provided, instead taking the slower route: studying drama and comedy, fighting for TV and film auditions and writing Fringe shows. But the worries remained until last year, when she decided to take part in a storytelling evening at which the theme was “identity.” She talked about hitchhiking home from a Coldplay concert. “It was the first time I’d ever spoken in public about being Chris’s sister, and it felt like a real relief, talking about this thing,” she says.
So now she has, by writing an extremely funny and gently poignant play, Superstar, which is running in Edinburgh. It’s not about Coldplay, but rather about Wren’s own life framed by her relationship to all four of her older siblings: Chris, who’s 42; Al, 40, an architect; Rosanna, 37, a nurse; and Rich, 32, a soldier. And it’s unexpectedly relatable — I’m also the youngest, and while neither of my siblings has shared the Super Bowl stage with Beyoncé (as far as I know), the observations about growing up in that position are spot-on.
With all due respect to Chris’s Extras cameo, I assume his youngest sister got the comic gene. Wren is dry as gin and lightning quick with an aside or character voice, but when we meet she’s also at pains to make clear that nobody should take her story as some kind of plea for sympathy. Or worse, that by rejecting nepotism she was committing an act of extreme valour.
She’s also aware of how the play might sound to the kind of cynic who won’t see it anyway. “If I wanted to cash in on being Chris’s sister, I’d go on Love Island,” she says. It’s a fair point.
As Superstar outlines, the Martins were raised in a village near Exeter. Their father, Anthony, is a retired accountant and had a firm that sold caravans, while their mother, Alison, was a music therapist who now teaches piano.
Early in the play, we hear how on Christmas Eve in 1989, a combination of festive sherry, Anthony’s “strong sperm” and a fallible diaphragm led to Wren’s “mistake” conception. She joined an established squad of siblings, whom she idolized instantly. They all had their roles: Chris was her “absolute superhero” who’d lead things. He was away at school by the time Wren was little, and she’d visit him in London when old enough. “Al is quite critical of everything, my sister’s the one who tries to have everyone be kind to each other, and Rich is the angry one.” And Wren? “My role was to be the crier.”
It sounds firmly middle-class. A story their father likes is of being at a dinner party and telling the man next to him: “You know, one of my sons is a banker and the other one’s an international rock star.” The man said, “Oh gosh, really? Which bank?”
It’s not strictly true, Wren says, though it does sum up the doubters of Exeter, where a woman once earnestly approached her parents to express condolences that their son had chosen to be “a musician.” By the time Wren got to boarding school, though, the band Chris set up was the biggest in the country. And then he met Paltrow.
“That was a whole different experience. The paparazzi would turn up at our house just to try to get us to say things.”
It’s also when the awkwardness ramped up. People would randomly ask how her brother was. “Which one?” she’d respond, just to make them squirm.
At 16, she relocated to a performing arts college in London with the dream of becoming an actor, but she resisted asking the family Oscar-winner for a leg-up.
“I didn’t want to ask Gwyneth’s advice too much because I was determined to do my own thing, but she was always very supportive and lovely to me,” Wren says. “I think the best advice was ‘never date actors,’” What about musicians? “No, she didn’t say that, but I have done and wouldn’t again.”
Wren was once forced to draw a comparison. When she left drama school, an agent told her that if she wanted to become a Hollywood star she’d “need to drop a couple of kilos.” She was upset so told Chris, who in turn told her about Gwyneth’s workout regimen.
“It took me ages to go, ‘I’m happy with my body. I’m never going to look like Gwyneth.’” She thinks on it, smiling. “Or maybe I will ...”
Despite Gwyneth’s “conscious uncoupling” from Chris in 2014, Wren still sees her from time to time, especially since their children, Apple and Moses, are two of a growing brood of seven nieces and nephews that “Cool Auntie Nics” can lead astray. Wren decided early on that she doesn’t want to be a Hollywood star, anyway. Her heroes are Jennifer Saunders, Tina Fey and Phoebe Waller-bridge. She’s still working part-time transcribing scripts for TV. But Superstar is the last one-woman show, for now at least. And it’s certainly the last in which she’ll mention the C-word.
“If in two years’ time I come back with Coldplay’s Greatest Hits: My Story, then people can say things have got desperate,” she says.
The relief is written across her face. It must feel like she’s opened a window in a stuffy room.
“It does, actually,” Wren says. “My story’s out of the way. Now I’m free to tell others.”