McKenna Grace's Relationship: The Actress Creates Music Based on Her Feelings

McKenna Grace is only in her late teens, but the actress has cemented her name in Hollywood. In addition to acting, the young star is a budding musician who sources her musical material from her life experiences and feelings.

In March 2023, McKenna Grace released her debut EP "Bittersweet 16," a record of eight pop-rock songs about heartbreak. Although she has dedicated her career primarily to acting, the actress said she had always been musically inclined.

She polished her songwriting skills while quarantining during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The actress didn't know how to play the guitar then but would write and create little tunes with her ukulele.

Songwriting became therapeutic for Grace; she used this craft to release/process her emotions, including the ones that felt good and those that didn't. Her musical influences include Conan Gray, Taylor Swift, and Lana Del Rey. She said:

"I didn't really have a lot of life experiences at the time and I was just writing about how I felt. [...] I'll write something that relates to how I'm feeling so long ago and then all of a sudden I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, this makes so much more sense to my life now!'"

McKenna Grace Has 'Never' Been on a Date

Grace admittedly has a penchant for heartbreak songs; however, the 17-year-old's love life has yet to begin. When asked about having a celebrity crush, she chose not to divulge for fear of potentially working with that person. Speaking about her the content of her songs, she admitted:

"I had never even been on a date or anything, and then I wrote all these breakup songs that were just about relationships in my life or situations that I went through."

Despite many of her songs musing over heartbreak in young romance, Grace explained that she sourced the lyrics from platonic and familial relationships. "It's just situations that happened that I've kind of molded into breakup songs [...]," she said.

Although she did write about people she liked romantically, the actress felt that "not all breakups have to be a relationship." One example is her debut single, "Haunted House," featured in the soundtrack for "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," co-starring Finn Wolfhard and Carrie Coon.

McKenna Grace Only Writes Music Based on Real Personal Experiences

Although "Haunted House" was Grace's first-known heartbreak anthem, she said it was about a "bunch of different situations/relationships" in her life. Expanding on the matter, she said:

"It was really just about the feeling of having someone you've known for so long leave your life, and then you just have all these memories left behind."

Grace also feels that as someone who primarily dedicates her time to telling other people's stories, music is the medium she gets to share her own. So she keeps her music as personal as possible, only writing things that are "very specific and true" to her experiences.

McKenna Grace on Portraying a Complex Relationship Onscreen

In 2022, Grace starred in the biographical mini-series "A Friend of the Family," portraying Jan Broberg. The young actress starred alongside Colin Hanks, Anna Paquin, and Jake Lacey, who plays her kidnapper, Robert 'B' Berchtold.

Berchtold was a family friend of the Broberg family, who frequently kidnapped their daughter, Jan, during the 1970s. Speaking about the relationship between Jan and Robert, as she would portray it onscreen, Grace observed:

"Their entire relationship, they were so close, but it was also based off of fear. But it's just Jan didn't entirely know. Does she love him? She does. She really did love him and care for him so much."

With this observation in mind, Grace learned how easy it can be to fall into a manipulator's trap. She showed notable commitment in preparation for the role and felt honored to have been part of the story.