NEW JERSEY'S FINEST
GRACE HELBIG
on Comedy, Cancer, and Keeping it Weird
INTERVIEW & PHOTOGRAPHY by Evie Friar
This article contains references to breast cancer, diagnosis, treatment and recovery — please take care when reading. For resources on dealing with a recent cancer diagnosis, please visit Macmillan Cancer Support.
EF Let’s take it back to the beginning… If your career was a film what would be the opening scene?
CC Oh, wow. Okay. Let's go. What would be the opening scene? I'm imagining we’re all essentially on the set of EastEnders. I grew up in a pub and it was a mad village pub full of mad people. So imagine the Queen Vic in EastEnders. My mum and dad would work behind the bar. We were really young kids and we used to be really bored so I’d put on plays in the pub and used to make all these – looking back now, probably alcoholics – watch my plays that I put on. That's what I imagine the opening scene to be. Just some six year old girl reenacting something she'd seen on the telly to a bunch of alcoholics.
EF That's so good. It's a ready made audience! You seemed to have grown up around theatre then, especially since you grew up near Shakespeare’s home of Stratford-upon-Avon. Was it theatre and, like you said, doing plays, that got you interested in acting?
CC I think so. I mean, the RSC was the first theatre I ever went to. I can tell you exactly what it was. I was about 16 and I went to see the actor James McArdle play Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Jonjo O'Neill was Mercutio – I can remember the whole cast. It was the first play I'd ever seen and I just thought it was amazing. I remember being at the RSC, and I was like, “Oh, holy shit, this is so cool!” And, that was always the thing. I always thought I'd love to work in theatre. I remember just being like, “If I can get one play a year I'll be really happy,” when I was at drama school, and, well… how life changes. But my first job was a play which then transferred to the West End and it really blew up. I ended up doing it for over a year in total. It was called Firebird. It was an amazing play. It was about the Rochdale sex grooming scandal and it was just such an amazing opportunity.
I loved it so much that I thought, “This is me now. I've got my foot in the door and I'll do this but I guess things change!” I’ve actually just come from a meeting about a play, which would be really cool to do.
EF You seem quite brave in the roles that you take on. Firebird dealt with a very serious topic, Cheaters is quite risqué and stepping into the world of Doctor Who must have been quite intimidating. How do you choose the projects you’re involved with?
CC It's really cool that you use the word brave. I’ve always found myself to be a bit of a wimp or not much of a presence. There were a lot of people at my drama school that were these really strong, outspoken, amazing women. I never really saw myself as one of them. Then I think I just got so lucky with the roles. I think Firebird helped because it didn't put me in a corner of being a goof just because I like comedy. I am quite goofy as a person but Firebird was the total opposite. Esther in Cheaters is a bit more of myself which was why I loved it so much.
Then with doing Doctor Who… I didn't really think about it at the time, but I think I was really lucky to do it. It was hard actually. It was a really hard part to get right. I think it's really lucky that I've had a bit of a range [of roles] because it's so easy for actors to get stuck or typecast.
EF Yes, Lindy in Doctor Who seemed like a really complex character. You had to go through quite a lot of different emotions in quite a short amount of time.
CC Yeah, it was hard to get right. I had to find the balance between making her likable, making her awful, making her childish. Essentially, it's just her, on screen, for an hour so you have to give her range and nuance. Me and the director, Dylan [Holmes Williams], we worked together to figure out who she was, but Russell T Davies also writes it so clearly. He knows exactly who that character is and if you're not quite hitting it, he'll tell you. He’ll make it really clear what you need to be doing. I also don’t think he would cast someone who wasn't doing the version of it he thought. Lindy was hard. It was probably one of the hardest things I've done. I didn't expect it. It was so technical. I was on my own for six weeks reading the whole episode with a member of the crew who was reading all the Doctor's lines and reading everyone else's lines. I was acting completely on my own so it was tough, but I'm really glad I did it.
EF You mentioned that you do tend to lean a bit more towards comedy. Is that a preference over dramatic roles? Do you have a main comedic inspiration?
CC Anna Maxwell Martin in Motherland. I think we should just give her all of the awards. It’s the best performance. I love that kind of comedy: that British, frantic comedy. I’ve always loved it, and I always hoped that's what I would do. But then I started off doing some very serious things, and I thought, “Oh, maybe I'm not funny.” But I'm at my happiest [doing comedy], I think.
I did a job years ago with all the boys who made People Just Do Nothing and they’re the funniest, silliest boys.
Don't get me wrong, they're really hard working actors. They're never late, they're always working hard, but they are such idiots. They are so fun to work with. Their improv is so impressive. I love, and everyone loves, doing that. Even Brad Pitt loves being silly. Actors love getting to be silly and pissing around. I think most actors would want to do comedy but it's hard to convince people that you can do it.
EF I had noticed your acting style has a distinct sense of play about it. How do you find time for play in your personal life and how does that inform your work?
CC I think it comes from just a desperate need to be liked [laughs]. I mean, I'm very social. I hang out with all my mates all the time. I treat my dog like a human. Do you know what helps? I have a really serious boyfriend. He's a lawyer. I’m so aware that my job is complete nonsense and I sometimes look over his shoulder and see what he's reading and I can’t understand the words. I'm not stupid but I cannot read what he's reading. Both of my sisters are nurses too. Everyone around me has really serious, hard jobs. So I just think I'm so lucky to have a job like this. We're just really lucky that it’s not that serious and we can have fun with it. The best work always comes when the environment on set is really light and people feel safe to mess around.
EF Have you ever discovered something new about yourself through playing a certain character?
CC To be honest, I wouldn't have ever expected this but, by doing Lindy in Doctor Who, I actually realized I was capable of so much more than I thought because it was so technical. I never thought I'd be good at the technical stuff. I used to be really bad at the simple things like hitting my marks and knowing where to stand and where to look. I never learned about the camera. I think Doctor Who taught me so much about the camera that I've taken with me.
I think on every job, I learn so much from other actors and from watching them. Being on this film as well, there was so much time just watching the greats do it. You learn so much from them all the time.
EF I wanted to ask you about working with such high profile people on the set of F1. There’s obviously Brad Pitt but Joseph Kosinski is such a powerhouse of a director too. What was the dynamic on set like and how was it watching them work?
CC Joe Kosinski is the greatest man in the world. He's such a dad and he's so relaxed, but so clever. I've been on a lot of sets now, but this is the most hard-working, tightest set. It's a really tight ship. Everyone's doing it because everyone’s the best. [Joe’s] assembled this crew who are the best in the business but he would involve us all. Even though it was a Brad Pitt movie, we felt like a real team and a family. Joe would bring us into his trailer and show us something if he thought it was cool. He’d always tell you how you were doing. We were working in such a highly strung environment because we were working with the live races and the live track. There were days where we had one go at a shot, and if we missed it, we missed it. And that happened but Joe would just be like, “Ok, we go again next year.” He's the most unbelievable director I've ever worked with. I don't know anyone else who could do that job. It also sets the bar, right? Like next time I'm on some film set in the UK or wherever, where some director or crew member is screaming at another crew member or someone's lost their temper. You just know there's no excuse for it.
Even Toby Hefferman, our first AD, who is probably the bones of that entire film – he never once raised his voice. A first AD has probably never been under this kind of pressure before because there's lives at stake every day. If we put one foot out of line at these races, our whole film could be shut down. But these people never once lost their temper; never raised their voice. They're just unbelievable filmmakers.
EF You mentioned that you were filming on live race tracks. Did you find that your background in comedic timing prepared you for filming in such a fast-paced environment?
CC I don't think so. They were totally different environments. I think the only skill set we all had to use for the F1 filming environment was just focus. We had to be laser sharp, focused. Don’t get me wrong, when we were doing scenes in our studio, on non race days, the atmosphere was very different and we would play and we would ad lib and mess around. There's loads of comedy in this film. It's actually a really funny, charming film. But on the race days, oh my God, you could hear a pin drop.
They involve the actors so much. We would be at the health and safety briefings, we would be at the department meetings at the start of the day. Normally actors get brought in and brought out. Whereas this was like an operation and we were all in it together.
EF You play team mechanic, Jodie. I imagine you had to go through a ton of training in order to play her?
CC Yeah, which is really cool. Towards the end of my audition process, I was taken to the Carlin garages and I spent the day changing the tires, changing the oil, changing the front of the car, all stuff to see if I could pick it up. Then once I got the job, we went back. We went to Carlin, went to Mercedes. We did, I'd say, probably a month of prep. There were only two actors in the pit crew so we were training with the rest of the crew. Some of them were SA’s (sporting artists) but they wanted it to look legit so they were all like ex-mechanics, ex-engineers, and a lot of them had worked in motorsports. Then half of them were our stunts team, our action vehicles team. We were all there together, for a month, becoming a team. You always had to know exactly what you were doing as you may be in the background of a shot.
We had liaisons every day. We had amazing help. We had Bernie Collins who's one of the most unbelievable, badass women in formula one. And Ruth Buscombe, they were both of our advisors, mainly for me and Kerry Condon because we were the two women in the team. There are very few women in Formula 1 but it’s happening more and more. So I play a wheel gunner and there's a female wheel gunner at Alpine, one of the teams, and I met her and watched her work. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it's a man's world and there was a lot of mansplaining at times. But I think, if anything, hopefully this film gets more girls into Formula 1.
EF Yes, I was going to ask you about that. Does Formula 1 being so male dominated make it extra special to play Jodie?
CC It kind of did. At the time, I was just fighting for my life, trying not to fuck anything up but, people kept saying to me, “You know, this is this is kind of huge, right?” The director, Joe, once said to me, “You know, girls are going to want to do this because they'll see you do it,” and I was like, “That's crazy!”
There are more and more females in Formula 1 now. There’s a female team; there are more females in the actual teams; loads of women love the sport. But it is a man’s world. On set, we had an amazingly talented camera operator, Natasha [Mullan]. She shot all of Top Gun [Maverick] and probably half of the shots, on this film, were her holding the camera. She’s so strong and so capable of keeping up with these men. Kerry [Condon], who plays Kate, our technical director, is unbelievable in the film. Her character is kind of based on Bernie but every woman that we met in Formula 1 was so fucking cool.
EF So I've seen the film being talked a lot about as “a true underdog story”. Has there ever been a moment in your own career where you felt like the underdog?
CC Oh my God, all the time. I don't know if it's more imposter syndrome than being the underdog, but when I first graduated I was going into these audition rooms and I was sitting amongst people who were child stars or actors or who had famous parents. I just came from this pub with all the alcoholics [laughs] and I didn’t know any actors. I was working a lot of jobs, I was waitressing. I didn’t feel hard done by because at the end of the day, if it's going to happen, it doesn't matter where you come from or what your family do. Everyone I know that came from more privileged backgrounds also works just as hard as I was working. But there were definitely a few years where I was like tooth and nail to try and get in the room.
Even being on F1, I was like, “What the hell am I doing here? Someone’s going to realize any minute now that I've slipped through the net here!” But I think that’s a good thing, right? It would be concerning if I didn’t feel like that. We all felt like competition winners on that set. Even Brad Pitt was like. “What the hell is happening?!”
EF So how long were you filming for and where have you been shooting?
CC We filmed for two years. Our base was Silverstone, in the UK. We built a garage there so we spent a lot of time there. We went to Budapest, Italy, Belgium, Abu Dhabi - we spent a long time in Abu Dhabi – Vegas, Mexico City…
EF Then most recently, New York for the world premiere! What was that like?
CC Oh my God, it was the coolest night of my life! I was terrified. I've never done a red carpet before, I've never done a photocall before. I took my best friend as my plus one so she was there calming me down. It was in Times Square, so you get out of the car and it's just wild. The photo bit is mad, everyone’s screaming. I think I went cross-eyed because I got overwhelmed! But it was amazing. I have this amazing stylist, Cher Coulter. She could smell how scared I was but she's just taken the reins, and she's got me these two amazing outfits (one for the London premiere as well). I’m so glad I trusted her because she got it so right.
We watched the film and had a great afterparty and the response has been mad. None of us have slept in about three days but it's fine because we're all just rolling off vibes.
EF Love it! Has your experience on this film changed or influenced what roles you'd like to pursue next?
CC This is going to sound wanky, but it's given me a real taste for the movies. Movies are so fun. I will always love doing small British comedies because that’s where my heart is and I hope to do them for the rest of my life. But there is something really special about being on a film set that has tons of money and everything is possible. The stuff on F1 shouldn't have been possible, but it was, and as a result we had the most life changing experiences. Getting to travel and getting to do the stunts and do fun things like that. It's just such an adrenaline rush. It's such a buzz.
I also think I'd love to keep working in England and I'd love to keep working on these BBC shows because I love the people. I love making anything that my friends and family would enjoy. British TV is my culture, you know? I would never turn my back on British television because I also think it's the best in the world. The shows that we make, I think, are fucking unbelievable.
EF And you can't beat the British sense of humor!
CC Exactly. God love the Americans but sometimes they don't get it.
EF Was that an issue on the F1 set?
CC Well, we had a whole British crew so they were always bringing the bants. And Brad Pitt has such a good sense of humour. He loves British comedy so he’s well up for it. Javier Bardem is the funniest, silliest man in the world too.
EF That’s so interesting because he’s played such terrifying characters!
CC Well, while we were shooting, I was watching the Menendez brothers show on Netflix. It has just come out. So every morning, I’d come in traumatised by what I’d watched the night before and I’d have to sit and have a cup of tea with him and talk through the episode. He would tell me about the experience and would break it down in the nicest, gentlest way possible. He’s like a gentle giant. He’d talk me through the episodes so I didn’t hate him anymore and I felt better about what I’d just seen. But God, he’s so terrifying in everything he does!
EF Speaking of culture, the magazine covers music, arts and culture as well. So I wanted to ask, what are you currently listening to? What were you listening to on set? And is there anything in the arts and culture world that you’re excited about right now?
CC Well, I'm going to Glastonbury next week so my whole personality is currently Glastonbury. I can't stop listening to The 1975 because I'm so excited to see them. I'm also listening to a lot of Olivia Dean, Clairo, a lot of quite chilled girl stuff.
The soundtrack to the film for me… This was such a fun day. Basically we were filming in Silverstone and there was a scene on the race day. The atmosphere was just wild. Only me and Brad were the actors in the scene, the rest were mechanics or real action vehicle stunt guys. So me and Brad were in these adjacent green rooms only separated by a piece of cloth. We were both so nervous. Him probably more so than me as he had loads of dialogue, but the adrenaline was pumping. It was right in my mouth. We were both just sitting in silence and then Brad goes, “Is it alright if I put some music on?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah.” So he puts this speaker on and he puts LCD Soundsystem on, you know the song Dance Yrself Clean? It’s such a good song and he played it so loud! The two of us just get really hyped up to this song and then we walk out and he says, “You alright?” and I say, “Yeah, are you alright?” and he goes, “I’m alright”... then we walk out to the start line with the song still playing. Then I just listened to LCD Soundsystem for the rest of the shoot because they get you so pumped!
EF You’ve had quite a few iconic moments at Silverstone. I read that you used to work as a waitress in the room that you did your F1 read-through in, is that right?
CC Yes! Oh my God, this story’s the best. Basically, I grew up near Silverstone and I used to waitress there at these corporate events when I was like 15 or 16. Miserable, I hated it. I hadn't been back there since I was 16. Now I’ve just got this huge job with these huge actors. I’d just met Brad and we walked into this room together and it’s the same room that I used to waitress in, that we’d be doing our first read through in. I’m just sitting there looking around the room at all of the most important filmmakers in the world. God, what a full circle moment!
EF Did you realise it was the same room straight away?
CC I realised straight away and I told Joe and he went, “Ooh, save that for the press tour. That’s a good story!”
EF Yeah, we all want to hear about it! That’s the end of your underdog story in a way. The most up-to-date scene in the film of your career, after starting out with the little six year old in the pub.
CC True! Who’d have thought? Not me!
F1: The Movie is out in UK cinemas now.
Follow Callie at @callie_cooke