Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

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2024’s BAFTA Rising Star, Mia McKenna-Bruce, meets Greg Williams at a Beatles pilgrimage site to talk about her new role in Sam Mendes’ Fab Four quadrant biopic and how she transformed from child actor to artist.

‘This is so cool!’ laughs Mia McKenna-Bruce as she crosses the famous zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios in St John’s Wood, London. It’s a bright January day early in the month and a dusting of snow makes the neighbourhood seem magical as I photograph her literally stopping traffic, dodging tourists trying to capture the famous image of The Beatles crossing here from the cover of their 1969 album, Abbey Road. ‘That’s the exact one!’ She marvels at the location, tickled to see so many fans striding over it to the annoyance of local motorists. 

Right now, Mia can skip across the busy road outside the iconic recording studios crammed with fans of the Fab Four uninterrupted, but that will likely change very soon. She’s currently filming Sam Mendes’ four-film project, The Beatles – an expansive, multi-perspective quadrant of biopics in which Mia plays Ringo Starr’s first wife, Maureen Starkey. It’s not the only high-profile project she’s got on the books, as she capitalises on her BAFTA Rising Star Award she received in 2024. I first photographed her there, coming off stage, award in hand, and she’s booked a run of noteworthy roles since.

Though she has seen Abbey Road recreated on the soundstage where she’s filming, Mia has never been to the famous studios before, admitting that before she took on the project and dove into her research, she had assumed the studios were in Liverpool. ‘This is all a big learning thing for me,’ she says as she skips over the crosswalk again. Originally from Eltham in South-East London, Mia’s family moved to Kent when she was in year 8 [aged 12-13] as her career was originally taking off as a child actor in TV shows such as Tracy Beaker and The Dumping Ground. She looked younger than her years as a kid, so could play younger roles with more sophistication than smaller children. She’s 28 now, and mother to a two-year-old son, Leo, but confesses that people still assume she’s a teenager. ‘I still get ID-ed for Lemsip,’ she chuckles. ‘Or I’m trying to get my son Calpol, because he’s teething, and they’re like, “We need your ID.”’ Her youthful look helped her take on the role that put her on the map as an adult actor, playing Tara, a teen tourist in Malaga, who struggles with issues of sexual consent on a girls’ holiday in Molly Manning Walker’s’ How to Have Sex. It was, by turns, a haunting, vulnerable and bubbly performance that got her on the BAFTA Rising Star shortlist. 

Since then, she’s led the cast of Netflix’s sumptuous adap of Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, worked opposite Matt Dillon in Claire Denis’ Senegal-set drama The Fence (which debuted in Toronto last year) and played Jane Andrews, the former royal aide and dresser for Sarah Ferguson who murdered her partner in mini-series, The Lady (coming out later this year). As we look at the fan graffiti on the whitewashed walls of Abbey Road and Google messages left there, Mia wants to leave her own mark but hasn’t brought a pen. Borrowing one off a visiting fan, she finds a small patch of wall to write on; ‘MMB + GREG WAS HERE.’ 

I ask about receiving the BAFTA. ‘It still blows my mind,’ she says. ‘That moment that you took that photo, I was literally like, “I think I’m going to throw up.” I was very happy, very shocked. Getting to have my family there, to see that moment, was probably the best thing about it all. That was so magical.’ When I ask what she puts getting the award down to she gasps, ‘Oh, a glorious question!’ She thinks for a moment. ‘I think I put it down to a lot of perseverance. A lot of rejection, because that feeling of rejection was horrendous for a long time. It was the thing that actually made me go, “I really have to just do this.”’

I wonder if there’s a moment she’s most proud of in her career so far. She leans on the studio railings and considers. ‘There’s a shot in How to Have Sex where Sam Bottomley, who plays Paddy, is walking away from Tara, who I play, and he says something over his shoulder. Molly, our wonderful writer-director, told Sam to throw random, horrible things at me. There’s a bit where I think you can just see that it looks like it really cuts me deep. And I really feel proud of that, because it wasn’t something that we planned. In that moment you really saw what the film was about.’ 

She stops to take a picture of the two of us and types into her phone. ‘I just sent that to Baz,’ she says, referring to our issue nine cover star, Barry Keoghan who is playing Ringo to her Maureen in Mendes’ film. ‘I wrote “I heart Ringo.”’ She looks again at all the messages on the wall. ‘I know it anyway, but to be reminded of what The Beatles mean to people, and then the fact that I’m a little part of retelling that story – it blows my mind. It’s wild. It’s such an honour.’ I ask if it’s daunting to think of how big the films will be when they come out. ‘It’s definitely scary. And in the initial read-throughs I felt way out of my depth, the whole imposter syndrome that we all feel – because you’re telling this story. But as soon as we got into it… even though obviously everything we’re doing is very big and on a large scale, Sam has a really glorious way of keeping everything feeling very intimate. So you forget about the madness of it all, and you’re just existing as close to these people as you can.’

Part of that existence is living with Maureen’s Liverpudlian accent. ‘Oh, do you know what? Before doing this, two accents I would never try to do were Scouse and Irish, because they’re so specific. And then obviously this came through, and I was like, “Fuck, I can’t not do it, just because I don’t want to do a Scouse accent.” I, obviously as everyone has, very much committed to the accent, but it’s really scary. Actually, doing this accent is probably the most vulnerable I’ve felt. It’s been an absolute dream come true already. It sounds so cliché, but a proper “Pinch me, I can’t believe I’m a part of this” moment.’ 

She was also pleased to headline Netflix’s most recent binge TV, playing a flapper socialite, Lady Eileen, who must solve a murder mystery at a country house in Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials. ‘What really excited me was that in the 1920s, a woman is just constantly being told “No, no, no.” It’s pushing those boundaries. Pushing outside the box. Also, I got to learn the Charleston.’ She stops on the pavement to do the famous dance in her high heels. ‘In the snow, in the boots!’ she laughs. This is some dexterity considering she tripped over a carpet on set and broke her foot, which meant her equally tiny sister had to be brought in as a body double for some physical scenes. It was a calling card for audiences as Mia teamed up with Martin Freeman’s Superintendent Battle, traded loving barbs with Helena Bonham Carter (playing her onscreen mum) and raced cars down country lanes in search of the truth. 

We set off to walk to a Beatles shop up the road where Mia jokes that if they sell life-sized cutouts she may buy them to take back to work. ‘Should I go back to set with all four of them? “Guys, I’ve missed you over Christmas!”’ Sadly, that idea is scuppered by the shop being shut. We decide to grab a coffee instead. A latte with oat milk for Mia, who describes herself as a coffee addict. ‘It’s a bit of a “don’t talk to her until she’s had her coffee” thing,’ she jests. To be fair, she sounds fun on set if her gaming MO is anything to go by. ‘I’m just a sucker for a game. I always have in my bag, on set, Uno and a mini travel chess board. Because if you’re spending hours in makeup and stuff, it’s really fun to just get to play chess with makeup artists. And a new addition to my games set is Monopoly Deal. And I love bingo. We go down to Romney Sands and play bingo with all the kids, and all of our extended family. It’s great fun.’

As someone who’s been working for years as an actor, living away from her family with chaperones as a kid, I’m curious what she thinks about that experience. Would she want her son to follow her path? ‘I wouldn’t want to say no, because obviously I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t had the journey that I’ve had,’ she considers. ‘But it’s not something I would actively encourage him to do. I knew from a very young age that I really, really loved it, and my parents aren’t a part of the industry. They didn’t push me into it, it was fully me driving it – at about seven years old. For as long as I can remember, I thought I would be a ballerina, a dancer. And then there was an audition in the newspaper for an amateur production of Seussical the Musical in Croydon. I was begging my mum and dad to let me audition. I got in to do this show. And then I ended up doing Billy Elliot in London for two years, which was just a dream come true.’

This is a story that many people can tell, but not every child actor manages to translate their success to an adult career. How did she move from child actor to artist? ‘I was on a show [Tracy Beaker] from the ages of 10 to 18 as a child actor. It was very fast-paced. I learned a lot about being on a set. I had absolutely no idea how to approach a character or a script. It meant I didn’t go to drama school. I hardly went to actual school, because I was away filming a lot of the time. So when I left that show at 18, and was auditioning as an adult at 18, I had absolutely no idea. In the room, they’d be like, “OK, talk about the character. Talk about the script. Talk about your ideas.” I had no idea. I got into a really bad cycle of putting too much pressure on it, and trying to navigate it myself, and having no real idea. So then I left the industry entirely. I left my agent. I went to Australia. I did a bit of party-party. And I realised that I did love it, but if I loved it enough, I had to put in the work. And so I went into workshops on a Saturday in London and started to learn about the more artistic side of acting. That’s when it started to come into its own for me.

‘I learned that everyone has a very different way of approaching it. That was actually a huge thing for me, because I’d see other actors on set doing their process, and me thinking, “God, if I don’t do that, that means I’m not an actor.” But actually, no, we all have very different ways of doing it. I also learned the best thing is to feel scared, because that used to petrify me. And someone actually said to me in one of these workshops: the feeling of nerves and excitement is actually the same emotion – it’s just the way that you breathe through it. And that was a huge game-changer for me, because now I love feeling nervous, because it’s just excitement. Whereas before that would be crippling for me. I’d get nervous, and I’d get myself in a state, and I’d have panic attacks. But now it’s like: no, excitement and nerves mean that I just care about what I’m doing.’

The acting now comes so naturally to her that she describes not remembering the experience afterwards. ‘I kind of black out when I act, I can’t really remember. People ask, “Do you like watching yourself back?” It’s not that I like watching myself back, but I love seeing stuff back, because I don’t have any real concept of what I just did. Me and Barry spoke about it. He’s pretty similar; he just kind of does it, and doesn’t overthink it, or doesn’t necessarily know what he’s just done. It’s not like a conscious thing. I think I had to learn to trust myself with that as well. And working with Molly Manning Walker on How to Have Sex really helped me with that.’

I ask if the dance background helps with that unconsciousness – in using her body as a tool of expression. She shrugs. ‘If I had to go and do a job where I had to do intense dance training beforehand for a role – a ballet dancer or something like that… something like Black Swan would be my absolute dream.’ The snow is falling more heavily now and we decide to head back to the house of one of Mia’s friends to warm up. The cold doesn’t put a dent in Mia’s mood or enthusiasm. She says she’s been likened to the Duracell Bunny. ‘Do you see it? Do you see the resemblance?’ she laughs. In terms of going on and on, I feel she’s set on a long career path…