Esther McGregor on ‘The Room Next Door,’ ‘Babygirl,’ Nepo Babies

Esther McGregor was sure she’d screwed up her audition to Pedro Almodovar’s hotly-anticipated English-language debut “The Room Next Door.”

Shooting a short film at the time (as a favor) and not feeling too hot about it, the hyper-creative and delightfully energetic actress, model, musician and tattoo artist (and unashamed “Nepo Baby” — more on that later) hadn’t really been paying attention to the projects she’d been invited to tape for. So she gave the lines that had been sent a quick read — perhaps not with the usual care and attention she might have usually — and emailed over the recording.

“And probably two minutes after I sent the tape I went back to double-check, saw Almodovar’s name and was like, ‘Oh my God, I butchered it, I ruined my opportunity!,” she explains, speaking from Nova Scotia on a rare day off from filming Amazon’s upcoming mini-series “You Were Liars.”

Almodovar is obviously the sort of auteur director any actor should be eager to work with at any stage of their careers. But for McGregor, a self-confessed “international film geek,” he was a filmmaker she simply adored, had studied passionately in school and whose library she had had watched “in awe” over and over again. “I was so, so, so disappointed in myself.”

Thankfully, such disappointment wasn’t warranted. About three months later, in late 2023 — and with zero interaction or feedback — she got a call saying the part, in which she appears alongside Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, was hers. 

McGregor was actually on the set of another film when she found out — A24’s “Babygirl,” from “Bodies Bodies Bodies” director Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas. And Banderas, of course, is someone who happened to know Almodovar rather well (eight films together and counting). “So when I told him I got the part, he was like, ‘No way!’” 

Naturally, the two then took a quick selfie and sent it to the director. 

“It was such a strange experience,” she says. “I had to not double take, but triple take, and was like ‘are you for real,’ and I went back and watched the audition tape and thought ‘hmm, ok!’”

Although she freely admits her roles on both “Babygirl” and “The Room Next Door” are small, they’re two small roles that have given the 22-year-old — only a few years into her acting career — the rare and prestigious feat of having two films screening in competition in Venice. They also happen to be two of the buzziest features premiering on the Lido this year (and both with only scant details as producers attempt to keep things under wraps). 

“The Room Next Door” — Almodovar’s first English-language feature — is another comedic family drama from the renowned director, this time, according to the limited notes, about a “very imperfect mother and her resentful daughter,” who live separate lives because of a “profound misunderstanding” (an entirely dialog free trailer released by Sony Pictures Classics recently provided little additional plot clues). “Babygirl,” meanwhile, is a steamy erotic thriller in which Kidman’s powerful CEO begins an illicit affair with a much younger, charismatic intern (played by Harris Dickinson).

For McGregor, who plays the “grungy” teenage daughter of Kidman and Banderas in “Babygirl,” her role had a strangely personal element to it. 

“A lot of my personal life and things that I’ve kind of gone through with my family, and the dynamic of that, weirdly kind of replicated itself on the screen, just in the opposite way as I was dealing with my mother instead of my father,” she explains with frank honesty. 

Throwing another A-list name into an already heady mix, McGregor’s father is none other than Ewan McGregor. And her character in “Babygirl” is the same age she was when her dad had a very public, very messy split from her mother Eve Mavrakis and started a relationship — and later married — his “Fargo” co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

“For me, that was the age when you shift and realize your parents are humans and fuck up and make mistakes and make decisions that might not be in the interest of others,” she notes. “So it was really interesting to revisit that with a different perspective. Now I’m 22 and all that shit with my family went down when I was 16, so with my newfound closure and understanding of my own trajectory, I was able to find a new voice with this character, and I thought that was really special.”

McGregor admits that her relationship with her father had been fractured, and there were years following the family break-up where they weren’t talking. But it was actually her first role in a major production that helped begin a healing process. 

Despite her love of acting come first and spending much of her childhood on her dad’s sets around the world (“magical places — my Disneyland … although I fucking hate Disneyland”), it wasn’t until later in life that she actually began pursuing it professionally (she says her parents “never let” her do any child acting). 

A dislike of “being bored” saw her take up music, first piano and later guitar. During COVID she started the band French Thyme with fellow musician Leo Major and, although she’s self-released an EP — mostly enjoyably floaty electro pop in which she also sings — she insists the music is purely for her own creativity (“It’s the one thing I have full control over”). 

A passion for art led to her also becoming a tattooist, getting her license and opening up a shop with a friend in New York City after she moved there from LA (where her family had decamped from the U.K. when she was 11). It was in New York where she also began modelling professionally (although her first campaign was with her older sister Clara in LA), and soon was doing fashion shoots and catwalks, opening Miu Miu’s 2023 spring/summer show in Milan (having been handpicked by Miuccia Prada). “I do a lot of runway modelling, but I’m also 5 foot 4, so I shouldn’t be doing a lot of runway modelling!,” she laughs.

But it was only while all of these vocations were already beginning to bubbly over nicely  that acting came to the fore, via a random audition request that came while she was in college in New York. The project was the Disney+ series “Obi Wan-Kenobi,” which, of course, features her father in the titular role. 

“I just thought, I’m going do it, just for fun to see what comes out of it,” she says. 

There was a call back. Then director Deborah Chow rang (just as she was outside her shop about to go into a tattoo session)

“She was like, ‘I just want to let you know, I haven’t told your dad this yet, but we’re giving you the part, and I really want you to know that it’s not because of your dad,’ which was really sweet of her,” she says. “So I said, ‘just do me a favor, don’t tell him yet, let’s just spring this on him.’” Which she did – literally on set.

Adding an extra dimension to the experience, not only do the two McGregors both appear in the series, but Esther — in a small role in the second episode — plays the drug dealer Tetha Grig who actually tries to sell Obi-Wan Kenobi spice (something she says she “tried not to think too deep into” given her dad’s previous battles with addiction).

While it may have just been a short scene, McGregor says acting alongside her dad for the first time was “a big step in both our relationships” and “really helped rekindle” things between them several years after she’d taken space to deal with everything that had happened with her family. “But I think I’d now really like to work with my dad again.”

Which bring us onto the subject of “Nepo Babies,” of which McGregor says is a badge she wears with pride. 

“Of course, my dad is an actor in the industry and I’ve been so privileged to have been able to grow up on sets and find my love for acting at such a young age — I don’t think I would have if I wasn’t around it,” she says. But while having a movie star father is something McGregor acknowledges has “opened doors” and would “never want to diminish” what it has given her, she asserts that it hasn’t booked her jobs.

“If I was shit, I’d be shit,” she notes. “So I definitely recognize that privilege. I don’t think I’d ever take being called a Nepo Baby negatively. If you want to, you can, but I won’t let it diminish the fucking hard work that I’ve put into this. If I wanted to sit on my ass, I would not be working right now.”

And working on her acting is all McGregor says she wants to be doing. Although the TV project in Nova Scotia — which doesn’t wrap until October — means she won’t be able to celebrate “The Room Next Door” or “Babygirl” in Venice, she seems more than happy to stay with the production. When a co-star told her he was looking forward to a break because he was “so tired,” she says her response was “No! I’d better be going straight to another set!” As she notes, “This is what makes my heart tick and keeps me going.”

The modelling has taken a back seat (the travelling was a getting a little much anyway), the music she can take with her (the guitar is just off camera on our Zoom call) and with the tattooing, while she’s since left the shop in New York for her friend to run, there’s a “really good client base” happy to wait for months until she’s free (McGregor also says many of the film crews she’s worked with all are all heavily tattooed and are eager for her to “add to their canvases”).

But with her still very nascent acting career now beginning to take off, McGregor’s very happy to be solely focussed on that. And honing her craft by observing those with more experience. Whether it be Almodovar’s unique rehearsal processes (she describes her entire time on “The Room Next Door” as a “beautiful, beautiful experience” and being in a “presence of love and of happiness”) or the way Kidman would meditate before scenes on “Babygirl” and then snap back into the role (a skill she’s been trying out herself — “I haven’t got it yet, but one day”), she wants to take it all in.

Interestingly, the one person she says she isn’t ready to learn from is her father, at least not yet.

“I should, and I’m working on it, because there are times like the other day, when I came home after a full eight hours of heavy, heavy material and was so fucking depressed and it really engulfed me, and in that moment, I thought I should probably call my dad and ask him what he does in those situations,” she says. “I really want to do it, but there’s this weird part in my head that says, ‘I want to figure this out on my own’ and then be like, ‘Hey, I figured this out.’ Because it’s a huge privilege to be able to speak to someone so close to you and get that kind of insight, it really is, and it’s only my personal stuff that gets in the way of that.”