Esther McGregor on ‘Babygirl’, Bad Tattoos and Joining the Sinclair Family

Words and Videography: Charlotte Amy Landrum | Photography: Lewis Vorn | Creative Direction: Ione Gamble | Special thanks to: Mackenzie Rutledge and Allie Hall

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This is part of our cover feature on your new favourite TV show, We Were Liars. To read the full story and enter the world of The Liars, click here. 

If there’s a girl that can do it all, it’s Esther McGregor. The model, actress, tattoo artist and musician is seemingly everywhere at once: Running her tattoo studio in New York, singing in her electronic pop band French Tyme, and more recently, on the set of We Were Liars. 

Every TV show, especially ones filled with suspicion, needs a character who can brighten the mood - even if it’s for only a minute before the tension inevitably returns. In We Were Liars, we get Mirren Sinclair, played by Esther. Mirren might remind us of ourselves as teenagers: Tackling self doubt, exploring her sexuality, and facing problems she’s not fully equipped to handle, yet nevertheless trying to keep hold of joie de vivre.

Similar to Mirren, Esther holds an excitement for life that is refreshing to be around. Whilst this shows in her eclectic body of work, it doesn’t fade in our conversation or on set. During our time in Nova Scotia shooting this cover during the filming of We Were Liars, Esther’s laughter could be heard from any room of the Sinclair home beside Emily Lind, Joseph Zada and Shubham Maheshwari - there’s no doubt they had the dream summer that We Were Liars turns on its head.

Below I chat to Esther on her dream film adaptations, her favourite day on set of We Were Liars, and working on the last year’s infamous raunchy hit Babygirl.

What was your favourite day on the set of We Were Liars?

That's such a hard question because we were there for six months, so there's a multitude of favourite days. I will say that one of my favorite scenes I've ever done was the lemon hunt. Me and Joe [Zada] have our little stunt scene and we had such a blast. It's basically how we interact with one another organically in our day to day lives, but I got to jump on his back and call him mean insults and that was really fun. 

Can you take me through your perfect LA day?

I'm an early bird and I really like waking up early and I need to have my coffee. I'm a black coffee girl. Then I’ll sit down at my desk and write down my thoughts and feelings in a few pages.

This is gonna sound like such a boring LA Girl day, but I'm really into hot yoga and moving my body, so I’ll go to my hot yoga class. I have this little studio by my house that’s got a good community.

Then, if I'm lucky, my friends are around - because all my friends decide to move to New York - but the ones that I have left. I’ll spend time outside by the pool, or go for a hike, and do something outside with someone I love and care about, which could also be my boyfriend.

I really like reading, and my favourite time of day to read is as the sun is setting a little bit before, so it doesn't get too cold, and I have time to read more than a chapter or two. Once I’ve finished reading, I’ll start cooking and making dinner and we’ll put on a good movie. And I think from start to finish, it's a pretty good day.

What's the worst tattoo you've ever done? 

Well, this was a funny story. I've never really done a bad tattoo but I was tattooing one of my friends' dads, and he wanted this huge chest piece of a coordinate. So we're stenciling it up. He sent me a few photos. We've got it all figured out. We checked it like five times. We moved it around a few times to make sure it was the perfect spot. I do the tattoo. It's great. We say good night. I wake up the next morning and he sends me a text: “Oh my god, Esther, I gave you the wrong coordinates to tattoo.”

I was like, “Oh my god, I'm so sorry. How can we fix this?” It wasn’t really my fault, but this was the first time this had ever happened, so I was like, “This is my fault.” He was the chillest human being ever though, so he just said let’s slap something over it. He ended up getting a whole bunch more tattoos for me, but that one was the scariest experience.

If you could be cast in any project next week, what would it be? 

I've really been enjoying book adaptations and I loved being on We Were Liars and having a source of material to pull from. I would love to be in a literary translation of some French book, a Murakami piece or even The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa, I love that book. I love playing characters and I'm a big reader, so I fall in love with characters very quickly. A book is such an accessible way to get into someone's mind and really live through the eyes of the narrator.

Were there any specific performances from TV, film, books or music that you looked to for inspiration when playing Mirren?

I make a playlist for all of my characters. It's not necessarily what she would listen to, but what feelings derive from scenes and songs that will put me in that headspace. But with Mirren, she had a whole bunch of funny, uplifting and comforting music. I listened to Le temps est bon by Bon Entander. It's a song about the summer, being happy, reveling in light, and it’s also really funky.

I also had the book. Her character just falls off of the page, so I just picked it up and made it my own. I do think that a lot of her traits and a lot of the inspiration I got for her was from my own experiences as a 16-year-old. I think we went through a lot of similar thoughts, obstacles, challenges, and dealt with them in similar ways. I'm still working on the perfection part of myself and not having that loom over me. 

The beautiful thing about characters is that you have to learn things through them. And I think one of her biggest lessons was just being herself and letting herself be a little bit messy - I'm working on that one for her and for me.

How was it working on Babygirl?

So much fun. It was such a beautiful place to learn and a beautiful place to observe, on top of having such great leaders. I felt like a sponge ingesting everything I could see and listen to and observe. 

My little sister on the film Vaughan [Reilly] was just so lovely and we’d just run around on set. Antonio [Banderas] is the warmest man I've ever met who just comes at you with open arms. Nicole [Kidman] is just a force of nature. She's got just so much skill and power. I felt very lucky to be a part of that set.

Any words for the We Were Liars fans?

A million but I'll say: enjoy, revel in it all, laugh, cry, and scream. I recently re-watched it again. It's so entertaining, interesting and complex with the different kinds of concepts that we tackle throughout the series.

Have fun with us on Beachwood, we definitely enjoy ourselves, and you can tell that we had a great summer. I just think people are gonna have fun watching this and be zinged in.