I’ve wrestled my body image issues
What do you do when your music career is KO’D by industry bosses? If you’re Kate Nash, you come out fighting. Emily Phillips meets the surprise star of hot new show GLOW
THE VERTIGINOUS HAIR, the glitter, the female-focused stories: it seemed unfathomable that Netflix viewers would develop wrestlemania, but its latest hit show GLOW ( Gorgeous Ladies
Of Wrestling) has achieved the impossible. And for Brit viewers, seeing flame-haired cockney Rhonda ‘Britannica’ Richardson hit the ring was especially thrilling, as it marked a big rebound for singersongwriter Kate Nash. Take yourself back to 2007, and Kate – along with indie-pop cohorts Lily Allen and Jamie T – was at the top of the charts with her debut album
Made Of Bricks. Her popularity was fuelled by confessional songs, such as Foundations, with lines like ‘You said I must eat so many lemons, cos I’m so bitter!’ which we
all over-enunciated along to at parties.
‘It was a special time,’ she says. ‘All these acts who were playing pubs and running club nights were ruling the airwaves.’ But after the genre waned, her label reportedly dumped her by text. It knocked her confifidence, she admits. ‘The music industry makes women feel like they’re failing all the time,’ she says. ‘I think it’s a way of having control over them, keeping them competing against each other instead of embracing each other.’ Afterwards, Kate, 30, regrouped, released music independently and headed to Hollywood for auditions. After a few disheartening experiences (‘auditioning is always a bit awkward’), she fell upon a script looking for a British girl who joins a female wrestling troupe. ‘A lot of the time you’re going for stuff you don’t care about. But with GLOW I was like, “I’m going to do whatever it takes!”’
And taking on the throw-downs of a wannabe wrestler can’t have been for the faint-hearted, especially as her character not only gets whipped around the ring in skimpy leotards, but also around the bedroom, naked, with ‘tender grouch’ co-star Marc Maron. ‘It was daunting. The nerves I had before those scenes made me address my own body issues. It made me realise the insecurities I have. I don’t think you can get past things like that until you face them. I found it empowering.’ At the height of her noughties music fame, Kate spoke openly about being a ‘real girl’ with a real body. She admits her body has changed, owing to getting healthier with age and the ‘physicality of wrestling three hours a day’. ‘I was 18 when I was first photographed in the wild. Now I’m vegan and I stopped drinking when I started shooting GLOW.’
The predominantly female cast trained for months before filming to ensure all their moves were as on point as any professional’s. ‘Everyone could do all the stunts, you see,’ says Kate. ‘It’s our own work and it’s amazing.’ And it’s not just the action that audiences are tuning in for. The major response is to the stories, few of which relate to men, making this a complete step change for female representation on our screens. ‘It felt really special when we were making it. Just to be able to work with that many women on a set is so rare – it’s a real friendship, on and off screen. The clothes, how fun it was, the wrestling. I just thought, how could this not change things and be exciting to people?’
So does Kate think the number of female creatives – from creators ( Orange Is The New Black’s Jenji Kohan, Lisa Flahive and Carly Mensch), through writers, directors and the cast – is key to its success? ‘They want to represent alternative storylines and motives for women on screen,’ says Kate. ‘It’s so cool to be part of something, especially where the women are doing the cool action shit, because usually women are just on the sidelines.’
This summer, Kate’s heading off on her 10th anniversary Made Of Bricks tour, having raised £155,000 on Kickstarter to fund her next album. In the meantime, what would she like to see next from the
GLOW girls? ‘More rawness! I just want the girls to be as wild as they are.’ ‘GLOW’ is available on Netflix now