Meg Stalter In London: “British People Are Absolutely Chic And Fabulous”

A non-exhaustive list of things Meg Stalter has left the house dressed as this year: an astronaut, an Emmy statue, an orange Latex-clad Kylie Jenner supporting Timothée Chalamet on the red carpet, and Carrie Bradshaw serving BDSM-lite in the “La Douleur Exquise!” episode of Sex and the City. All of which makes me wonder if she doesn’t feel a certain pressure at this time of year, now that Halloween has become almost as intense a game of celebrity oneupmanship as the Met Gala. “I know… I’m always wearing costumes, so what do you do?” she wonders, speaking over the phone ahead of her guest slot at False Idols, held in Tottenham superclub Drumsheds and billed as London’s biggest queer Halloween club night. “And sometimes the answer is… no costume at all.”

Sure enough, even though I struggle to picture the sartorially ebulliant Stalter greeting her audience in standard issue jeans and T-shirt, footage from the show later finds her in a low-key-for-her combo of jorts, tank top, ankle socks and Mary-Jane flats. (Albeit with her hair in rollers and some ’90s Madonna-esque skinny brows.) “There are no rules, really,” Meg explains of her approach to getting dressed in any context, be it comedy, the red carpet or her day-to-day life. “We’re allowed to explore. Our jobs are so fun and exciting and silly, why wouldn’t we take that to the red carpet and not be so in a box? As long as you’re respecting other people and being kind, then as artists we should be allowed to… go off!”

The burgeoning multi-hyphenate takes a similar view when it comes to her creative output more broadly – hence her newest incarnation: pop icon. “Even the idea of me doing music is sort of out of the box for sure… although, of course I’ve always been a pop star.”

A veteran of Chicago’s comedy and improv scene, Stalter raised her profile with viral Instagram sketches in the pandemic before being cast in the cult HBO comedy Hacks in 2021, frequently upstaging even Jean Smart (whose performance as stand-up Deborah Vance won her the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Emmy five years in a row) with her unhinged turn as deluded talent agency assistant Kayla. After a stint on Broadway as the lead in Cole Escola’s camp farce Oh, Mary!, Stalter is now proffering further evidence of her triple threat status in the shape of her debut album, Crave, and its lead single, “Prettiest Girl in America”.

Musically, she’s influenced by the greats, past and present. Addison, Britney, Dolly (“The queen. I know she’s country not pop, but she transcends.”) Stalter cites watching Spears’s famous and now much memed performance of “Baby One More Time” from her 2000 Live in Hawaii show as a formative experience. “She’s sort of hopping down the stairs… it really opened up the world of what can happen on stage.” Right at the top of her list of inspirations in the pop world, though? “It’s myself.”

The False Idols gig is far from a first introduction to London for Stalter, who last year starred opposite Will Sharpe in Lena Dunham’s Too Much, inspired by the showrunner’s own relocation to the UK. “I really do enjoy being here,” says Meg (who will later declare that she “loves beans on toast!” on stage at Drumsheds), “but I haven’t had that much free time in general – [even with Too Much] we were filming every day, and then at the weekends I was just so tired in my little house.” Overall, she says, it’s “like a less chaotic, cleaner New York”. As for the people? “I think that British people are absolutely chic and fabulous and they have beautiful voices,” Stalter says. “They are very kind. Americans are loud and can be obnoxious.”

Given her refusal to be pigeonholed, only a fool would try to predict Meg’s next move. But fans will no doubt be hoping to see another reunion with her Hacks co-star Paul W Downs – the eye-rolling Jimmy to her Kayla and co-conspirator behind some of her best-loved red-carpet moments. That and a killer costume for Halloween itself. “Anything Halloween is so fun,” she says. Stalter knows she’s on the right track with an idea when “my team is excited but a little bit nervous to pull it off. [A good costume is] something that scares everybody a little bit.”