TV Highlight: Strange Connections

When RTÉ asked the award-winning, but still relatively obscure, actress, musician and dancer Kate McGrew to participate in their new alternative reality TV show, Connected, there was one quite important detail they didn’t yet know about the artistic American’s life.

“They weren’t aware I was also a sex worker until well after we’d started filming,” the 35-year-old Ohioan admits. “But they took it really seriously when they found out – and respectfully, too. Because there’s a lot of hype around the idea that women are coerced into doing this kind of work, they had to adamantly make sure that I was doing this of my own volition.”
As Connected will show over coming weeks, the boisterous McGrew – who trades as a dominatrix under the moniker Lady Grew – is very much in control of her own life and career, however alternative her choices may seem to some.
A self-shot observational documentary, the series follows the lives of six very different women in contemporary Ireland. Each of the participants – none of whom actually met until a few weeks ago when the teaser trailer was shot – was given a video camera and the editorial freedom to decide when, where and what to film over a ten-month period.
Despite the obvious temptation to sugarcoat their lives, McGrew says that caution was soon tossed to the wind. “I’d say a few of us initially went, ‘Well, I’m not gonna show that’ and ‘I’m not gonna show that’. I think it would be accurate to say that we all ended up, perhaps, being even more frank than we thought we were going to be.
“I went, ‘You know, if I’m going to do this, I should do it essentially right’. If I was gonna try and self-edit the entire way through, it would have been awful ”
It does no harm that McGrew’s an absolute dead ringer for fellow Ohioan and Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” she laughs. “She’s from Cincinnati, Ohio and I’m from close enough, a town called Oxford. I always thought if I meet her I’m going to say, ‘Ms. Parker, does everybody tell you that you look just like Kate McGrew?’”
She has been in Cork six years. “I came on a vacation with my family and stayed on a whim,” she recalls. “Frankly, I stayed because somebody offered me some work in their family’s garden. I had a strong feeling about remaining. And then I started making music with people, and it started going really well very quickly. It made sense to stick around for a while. Here we are six years later.”
She began working in the sex industry more than a decade ago, mainly to fund other musical and theatrical projects. “I started [in the sex industry] in New York City. And then I came to Ireland, and stopped for quite a while because I was focusing on the music.
“But I sort of wanted to get back into it. I didn’t quite know how. When I started in the industry, the Internet was relatively new. It didn’t occur to me to put myself on a website. I found my way working in a strip club again and then put myself on a website. I had been here long enough working and doing the music and theatre shows, and it’s great... but I needed more money.”
She’s not a nymphomaniac, but does enjoy her work. “I happen to find it very interesting,” she says. “Sort of psychologically and anthropologically interesting. I really enjoy it. To me, it is very, very pleasurable. I like the intimate interaction with these people. I do feel there’s a lot of sort of caretaking. It’s therapy, I suppose.”
Although she’s worked as an escort on and off for well over a decade, she claims never to have had a particularly negative encounter.
“I know it’s not every woman’s experience, but I’ve never felt in danger.”
Her respectably middle-class family back in the States weren’t aware of her sex industry career until recently. Their reaction to her shock revelation will feature in a future episode of Connected.
“I tell my parents about the work that I do during the show. Basically, I didn’t want them to find out on TV. So, that all unfolds for everybody. People will have to tune in. There’s certainly a bit of drama.”
What’s her opinion of the much debated ‘Swedish Model’, which would see men criminalised for buying sex rather than women prosecuted for selling it?
“I think it’s quite a dangerous concept because any problems within the sex industry will greatly worsen through criminalising any aspect of it. Introducing criminality, it introduces the criminal element. There would inherently be more organised crime and stigma would worsen toward women. These kinds of things make women far less safe in the industry.”
What is she hoping to get out of her participation in Connected?
“I hope that new opportunities arise for myself artistically,” she proffers. “I also hope women will be in more conversations with each other about the right way to move forward and create systems in our society so that we can live more safely and healthily and happily.
“To me it’s our birthright to do what we want with our bodies. Our bodies are our own. For the consensual exchange of sexual services for money to be criminalised in any way... we’re going down a dangerous path. To me, it’s essential that women be given full governance of their bodies. This issue is the same issue as the abortion issue, it’s the same with the drugs issue. It’s all about owning governance of your body.”

Connected airs on RTÉ2 Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10.30pm.