Page 276 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

5 April 2020

Mirren Mack: how eight-hour bus trips put Nest

star on road to success

The Scottish actress on why the themes of BBC One’s surrogacy drama felt close to
home

Sarah Hughes

Mirren Mack as Kaya in a scene from The Nest. Photograph: Mark Mainz/BBC/Studio Lambert

The 22-year-old actress at the heart of the BBC One drama The Nest admits that it wasn’t so long
ago that she worried about being “too different” from her fellow drama students to make it in her
chosen career.

Mirren Mack, who plays volatile teenage mother Kaya in the acclaimed series about surrogacy,
says she initially struggled with her feelings about young actors from more affluent backgrounds.
“I worried that I might not speak like them and I was a wee bit nervous about how to hold myself
in conversations.”

Kaya is only Mack’s second TV part but her performance has been singled out for praise by critics.
She stars alongside Martin Compston (Line of Duty) and Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders) in the
five-part drama that continues this weekend and concludes on Easter Monday.

Although her upbringing in Scotland meant she understood the acting world – her father acts in
repertory theatre and her mother teaches drama – she still had some concerns about fitting in.

“I couldn’t afford to simply get on the train the night before an audition and stay in a hotel,” she
said. Instead, she would take a night bus from her home town of Stirling to London. “You get a bed
on the bus and a muffin. I’d get on at 11pm, get into London at 7am, get changed in Starbucks’s
toilet, go and do the audition and then get the bus back.”

She went on to win a place at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and was able to attend thanks
to a number of bursaries and scholarships.