TALKING TO KATE NASH
Having caught our attention back in 2007 with her Brit Award-winning number 1 debut-album, ‘Made of Bricks’, Kate Nash is back on tour. We caught up with the singer and actress ahead of her date at the Boileroom this June.
YOU GO ON A UK TOUR THIS JUNE AND COME TO THE BOILEROOM IN GUILDFORD AS PART OF YOUR TRAVELS – WHAT CAN FANS LOOK FORWARD TO ON THE TOUR?
Well, I haven’t actually done a tour in the UK yet for my new record that came out last year, so I’m definitely going to be playing some new songs that no one has seen me play live before, which will be exciting and fun. Whenever I play I mix it up, I have a lot of albums and a lot of songs now so it’s quite a varied show.
It’s kind of a challenge, fitting in shows around my schedule shooting GLOW. Last year I managed to do a US tour and some festivals, but I didn’t have time to do a UK one, so I’m glad that I’m getting a few dates this year.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH GUILDFORD OR SURREY AT ALL – ANY MEMORIES OR ANECDOTES YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?
Actually, the girls in my band, Emma Hughes and Linda Buratto went to ACM in Guildford. When I wanted to get women in my band I basically interviewed a bunch women from ACM and that’s how I found them. They have a lot of connections there because that’s where they went to Uni.
I think I was in a rebellious mood when I last played Guildford and I think was quite angry. I was with this old management company and I was about to get rid of them. I don’t know what p****d me off, but I think I played Underestimate the Girl14 times in a row at the end of the show. I don’t know who I was trying to annoy, but I’m sure it annoyed someone.
YOU’RE A KEEN PROPONENT FOR EQUALITY IN MUSIC, AND RECENTLY PLEDGED TO WORK WITH A FEMALE/FEMALE-INDENTIFYING PRODUCER – HOW’S THE SEARCH GOING AND WHAT HAS THE REACTION BEEN LIKE?
It’s been really good actually. I’ve ended up producing a record myself and Linda in my band has engineered it, so I kind of did that pledge. Linda was in town and staying at my house in L.A, and we got straight to recording. My last record took a long time to get together and come out, so I really wanted to do something that was more immediate, so I thought why don’t I just produce it?
I’ve dabbled in it a little bit in the past but never really produced a full album by myself. It was really cool because it was all based on the limitations of what I know how to do and what I’m capable of. It was nice, because when you’re in the studio there so many options now and you can do anything and it can be quite overwhelming, so it’s quite nice to say let’s just make a record out of what we can actually do. Linda engineered it, which was really fun and then I found a female mixer for mastering, so the whole thing will be produced by women which I think is really cool.
YOU STAR IN THE NETFLIX SHOW GLOW– FEATURING THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING WHO ALSO MADE SOME STEPS INTO EQUALISING AN EQUALLY MALE-DOMINATED ARENA – HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED?
I did this pilot for Jenji Kohan in 2015. I just auditioned for this role called The Devil You Know,and Eddie Izzard and Zawe Ashton were starring in it. It was a pilot for HBO about Salem and the witches in the 1800s. It was a really cool script and was directed by Gus Van Sant and Jenji Kohan and it went really well, but ended up not getting picked up by HBO. But because I had done it I was on Jenji’s radar, and the casting director for that show is the same casting director for GLOW. When I heard about GLOWI just emailed them and said you have to let me audition for this. I heard spandex, glitter and wrestling and I was like ‘f**k’. I watched a documentary about the original Gorgeous Ladies and I thought oh my god, this is literally the dream job.
I made this crazy audition tape. The original GLOWis quite insane. They did all these really weird skits. It was like a kids TV show with wrestling and there were these comedy skits that were so weird, so 80s and so gaudy. All the gorgeous ladies rapped, so they would be like ‘we’re the gorgeous ladies of wrestling and we da-da-da in the ring’. They would all rap before their fights and some of them just couldn’t rap at all. So I made this really weird rap, 80s GLOWvideo and then did a normal scene too, and I got the role. A few weeks later I was flying out for wrestling training.
ARE YOU A FAN OF WRESTLING? DO YOU THINK YOUR WRESTLING ALTER-EGO WOULD BE ANYTHING LIKE YOUR ON-SCREEN PERSONA OF BRITANNICA?
I actually really love wrestling now. I didn’t understand it all before. We work with Chavo Guerrero, who is a wrestling legend from a family of wrestlers. He’s an iconic Mexican wrestler and he’s really taught us about the culture. What gets explained in GLOWis that it’s this soap opera drama and there are all these stories. It’s the element that makes everyone think it is fake, but it’s very athletic and crazy. It’s not real fighting obviously, but a really weird nuanced mix of dance, stunts and Capoeira [a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of danceand music] – it’s a really unique thing and I really respect it.
The wrestling community has welcomed us with open arms and they love the show. Music can be a bit snobby you know? Like ‘oh you haven’t heard of this band since they weren’t even a band – you don’t know anything’. This is like, anyone is welcome, and we‘ve been welcomed with open arms by the community.
I love playing Britannica; I think the smartest woman in the world is a fun one to play.