You've definitely seen her somewhere. Or
everywhere. At the age of 16, Mckenna Grace has managed to make her way into almost
every single movie and TV show to ever exist. Think that's an exaggeration?
Stay tuned to learn about the other projects that Paige from Young Sheldon has been in.
Before Mckenna was in Gifted, she had already done more than a dozen television roles, including
50 episodes of the long-running soap opera The Young and the Restless. She had also taken parts
in several movies, but her role in Gifted is one she may very well be typecast in: a child prodigy.
Mckenna starred as 7-year-old Mary Adler in 2017's Gifted, which was filmed in 2015. She
portrayed a character who becomes the subject of a custody battle between her uncle Frank and her
grandmother, Evelyn. Mary's mother, Diane, died by suicide, seemingly from the stress she put
herself through obsessively trying to solve the Navier–Stokes problem. Frank wants Mary to have a
chance at a normal life, fearing that a school for the intellectually gifted could put her on a path
that would mirror her mother's. But Evelyn was dedicated to seeing Diane solve the problem and
wants to encourage Mary's intellect to be developed to its full potential.
Grace won a couple of awards on the festival circuit for her turn as Mary. She took home the
2017 awards for Breakthrough Performance and Best Performance by a Youth from the Phoenix
Film Critics Society. She was also nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics Association's
Award for Best Young Actor and the Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Young Actress.
In 2017, Mckenna Grace made the transition from child prodigy to child skating superstar
for the dark comedy I, Tonya. Based loosely on real-life events, the film stars Margot Robbie as
controversial figure skater Tonya Harding. It tells the tale of her formative years
and the events leading up to the January 1994 attack on fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan,
an assault in which Harding's husband Jeff Gillooly was also implicated.
Mckenna plays a young Tonya Harding in flashback sequences. She's bullied and
harassed by her mother LaVona Golden, who aims to mold Tonya into a champion.
I, Tonya explores the dysfunctional and abusive relationships that comprise Tonya's life,
presenting her in a more sympathetic light than any media coverage she'd received in the fallout
from the Kerrigan attack. Writer Steven Rogers interviewed Harding and Gillooly separately,
noting that the two principal parties had differing accounts of how the events had
unfolded. During a panel for the SAG-AFTRA foundation, Rogers said,
"And I thought well, that's my way in — I'll just put everyone's
point of view out there, and then let the audience decide."
Grace described her role as the young Harding as "the most challenging role" she'd ever done
because of one big factor: she had to learn to ice skate. She told The Boston Globe,
"I've never done ice skating before [...] I'd fall
and I was all beaten up but I had to get up and keep trying."
It's a sentiment that mirrors Tonya's troubled life, as seen in the film.
Life can change pretty quickly for kids on a network TV drama. One minute your father is
the outgoing Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who wasn't invited to the State
of the Union address, and then suddenly he's the President of the United States.
That's what happened to Penny Kirkman, whose father Tom was chosen for the title position
on ABC's political thriller-drama Designated Survivor. When President Robert Richmond addresses
the nation in front of both Congress and the Supreme Court, an explosion rocks the Capitol
building, killing almost everyone inside and leaving the country without a working government.
Except for Tom Kirkman, that is, who was selected by President Richmond to not attend. This was to
maintain the line of succession — so he's suddenly elevated to the role of President. Sounds like a
decent consolation prize for not being invited to a party that, while memorable, ended pretty badly.
Mckenna's role as first daughter Penny Kirkman included sporadic appearances
as a recurring character, rather than as a member of the main cast. She appeared in 21
of the series' 53 episodes, including seven of the 10 episodes in Season 3,
which was produced and released on Netflix when ABC decided not to renew the show after
Season 2. In an interview with Red Carpet News TV, Grace said she enjoyed being part
of her Designated Survivor television family, calling Kiefer Sutherland and TV mom Natascha
McElhone "both very, very nice and kind people." She also revealed something she
has in common with her TV dad: they both have stuffed animals in their trailers.
Shirley Jackson's 1959 horror novel The Haunting of Hill House has been directly adapted three
times, twice for the big screen. In 1963 and 1999, there were The Hauntings. And then there was the
first installment of Netflix's The Haunting anthology series, The Haunting of Hill House.
Every incarnation of the tale involves the supernatural goings-on at Hill House,
a sweeping country mansion nestled in the hills.
The Netflix series tells the story of the Crain family
and their experiences over the course of two timelines, 26 years apart,
at the spooky location. Father Hugh Crain has purchased Hill House and is renovating it to
sell for a tidy profit. In the meantime, he's moved his wife Olivia, sons Steven and Luke,
and daughters Shirley, Theodora, and Nell into the mansion. From there, things go
about as well as you'd expect them to for a series with the word "Haunting" in the title.
Grace plays the young version of Theo, the middle child who's arguably the most well-adjusted.
She also wears gloves all the time. It's not because she's a germaphobe or something
weird like that. Unless, of course, you count having extrasensory perception and
experiencing people's thoughts and feelings through tactile contact as weird.
Living in the reality of The Handmaid's Tale sounds pretty terrifying. It's reasonable
to think that surviving a coup would require some grit and determination.
But then there's witnessing the overthrow of one's homeland at the hands of radicals who
then institute martial law and enslave women as broodmares. Plus, there's the backdrop
of declining human fertility already wreaking havoc in society. Dealing with all this without
losing one's mind is a huge, intimidating task. Thus, many of the characters on the popular Hulu
series have been hardened by their experiences, especially the title handmaid, June Osborne. It's
through this hardening that she has been able to effectively resist and break her shackles.
She rescues dozens of children in the process via the Angels' Flight in Season 3.
Naturally, that kind of notoriety brings with it certain expectations, as seen through the
eyes of Esther Keyes, the extremely young wife of Commander Keyes. Esther offers June and the
other escaped handmaids refuge at her farm at the beginning of The Handmaid's Tale Season 4.
Mrs. Keyes is strict and demanding, with an insatiable appetite for vengeance — and
the devastating explanation for that is revealed by the end of the season premiere.
Grace expressed her excitement at playing Esther Keyes in an interview with Elle, saying:
"I thought she was so cool. She's such an interesting character to play,
especially with how intimidating she is. The way she switches from being so anxious and upset
to 'If you weren't going to fight, then you shouldn't come here.' She's angry and
then she's regal and talking to the guards. She changes up so quickly."
The sitcom Full House launched the careers of many prominent child actors, including Candace
Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, and twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. After that, the Netflix revival
show Fuller House gave visibility to a whole new generation of young talents,
including Mckenna Grace. Set in the same San Francisco townhouse as the original series, and
focusing on the now-grown Tanner siblings as they raise children, Grace appeared on eight episodes
of Fuller House across four seasons of the show. Her role? Rose Hefferphizer-Harbenberger,
an elementary school student and daughter of C.J. Harbenberger, the new partner of
D.J.'s old boyfriend, Steve. She also starts a cute schoolyard romance with D.J.'s son, Max.
"I'm the king of the world!"
Being a part of Fuller House was personally fulfilling and important to Grace.
As she wrote on Instagram,
"I'll never forget sitting on the 'Full House' couch talking with Bob Saget,
I had watched every episode of 'AFV' and 'Full House' and I was so excited."
For a few years, Mckenna Grace established a small niche for herself as the go-to young actor
to play child or tween versions of characters she somewhat resembles. In the 2019 Marvel Cinematic
Universe entry Captain Marvel, the launch of Brie Larson's take on the intergalactic superhero,
Grace portrayed Carol Danvers as a child in a few sequences.
She also stood in for Kiernan Shipka, playing the child version of Sabrina Spellman on an episode
of Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Finally, in the 2021 horror movie Malignant,
about an adult woman who is tormented by hallucinations of horrific murders, Mckenna played
the kid version of the main character portrayed by Annabelle Wallis in the rest of the film.
As Mckenna told Teen Vogue:
"I like to make a joke that I play the younger versions of so many people [...] I like to say,
'You know, if they ever do a biopic of Finn or something,
I'm playing the younger version of him.'"
She was, of course, talking about her Ghostbusters:
Afterlife on-screen sibling Finn Wolfhard. Speaking of which…
Potentially the biggest and most visible project to date in the
growing career of Mckenna Grace is her central role in Ghostbusters: Afterlife,
the 2021 entry in the comic-sci-fi series that started way back in 1984 with Ghostbusters.
Set more than 30 years after the events of the original movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife finds a
mom moving her kids to a new house in a new town. There, they learn of their connection to the
spirit-sucking heroes who saved New York more than once. Starring opposite Carrie Coon as her mother
and Finn Wolfhard as her brother is Grace as young, would-be ghostbuster Phoebe. Ghostbusters:
Afterlife was a $200 million box office hit in the age of COVID-affected theater attendance,
and that was more than enough to prompt Sony to order a sequel, meaning Grace has gotten herself
an important role in a major film franchise before she's even old enough to vote.
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