Pop Star King Princess Didn’t Think She Could Be an Actress (Then She Talked to a Psychic)

King Princess’ first inkling that she might end up an actor came from a deck of tarot cards (“You’re going to act,” the clairvoyant informed her). The second clue was the WME agent who kept calling and calling.

In other words, the signs, both celestial and otherwise, were all there — she just wasn’t quite ready to see them. “I ignored everyone for as long as I could,” says the indie pop star, born Mikaela Straus. “I was in full music mode.”

But a few years — and a minor creative crisis — later, the idea started to feel less far-fetched. At 26, with two albums, a Coachella slot and a Saturday Night Live debut under her belt, King Princess found herself questioning what came next.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, she grew up surrounded by music — her father, Oliver Straus, is a recording engineer who ran a local studio. By the time she was a teenager, she could play guitar, bass, drums and keyboards and was already writing songs that would land her a spot at USC’s Thornton School of Music. But at a certain point, music didn’t feel like enough. All she knew for sure was that she wanted to devote herself to something else creative.

“I’d been doing music professionally since I was a kid, and I was feeling icky about it,” she explains. “When you’re a musician, you’re on an island, you’re baring your soul, and the art is all you. I was a little kid in charge of a lot of decision-making that I was not intelligent enough to do. But with acting, it didn’t feel personal. It taught me to put my ego aside.”

So, she started auditioning — obsessively. “I’d get a bunch of callbacks and no offers, but it didn’t feel like rejection,” she says. “It felt like I was getting closer.” Eventually, one of those yeses came: a role in the upcoming second season of Nine Perfect Strangers, Hulu‘s adaptation of the Liane Moriarty novel, now headed to the Alps for its latest psychedelic retreat.

King Princess was already a fan of the series (“As a gay person, I watch anything Nicole Kidman is in — it’s important to me that I’m up to date with our history”) and of mushrooms (“I was actually in the middle of six months of microdosing, and it was incredible for my mental health”), so the project felt aligned from the start. It was even more so when she learned she’d be playing a queer former piano prodigy who suddenly loses her ability.

Once cast for her debut role, she worked closely with showrunners to make sure her character’s queerness — and relationship with her girlfriend, played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers — rang true. “Maisie and I were really gung-ho about this being a fucked-up gay relationship that felt real to our community,” she says. “And there’s nothing realer to the lesbian community than an overbearing, nightmarish, mommy-daughter gay relationship. This girl is me, if I didn’t go to therapy.”

Her only hesitation about acting, she says, wasn’t about performance — it was about performers. After spending six post-college years in Los Angeles, she’d met enough actors to give her pause. “I have wonderful friends, but actors are … actors,” she says with a knowing look.

But her time on Nine Perfect Strangers changed her perspective. She praises the grace of Christine Baranski and says a pre-shoot friendship with co-star Murray Bartlett was especially grounding. “He was like, ‘Hey, I love your music. If there’s anything you need, let me know.’ And I was like, ‘Actually, there’s a ton of shit I need.’ ”

She asked him everything — from how a set runs to how to interpret her character. When they arrived in Germany for filming, she returned the favor by introducing him to The L Word. “He’d never seen it, so I was on a mission. I was like, ‘You’re basically a lesbian, so we need to watch this,’ ” she says with a laugh.

While prepping for Strangers, she also was plotting her next music chapter — exiting her previous record deal, taking meetings and starting work on her third album (due out this summer). Acting is now a full-fledged part of the plan. Shortly after returning from Germany, she booked the upcoming feature Song Sung Blue, starring Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman and set for release this Christmas.

She uses her stage name — King Princess — for both music and acting. What might seem like a branding decision is, she insists, more about creative coherence.

“My ethos has always been that King Princess is the most armored version of myself,” she says. “I’ll dial it all the way up when I’m performing music, or turn it down a bit for certain scenes. But within all of that, I have no choice but to be exactly who I am. I’m King Princess onstage, I’m King Princess on set, and I’m King Princess picking up dog shit in the park.”

This story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.