While hits like “Talia” and “Cheap Queen” are likely still in rotation for any tried-and-true fan of King Princess, the artist’s third studio album, Girl Violence, is well worth adding to the playlist. Out today from the independent label Section1, the work is an energizing yet thoughtful meditation on love, trust, pain, and queerness, only deepening what the artist, born Mikaela Straus (she/they), has contributed to pop music since her debut in 2018.
But beyond expanding her musical oeuvre, Straus is also setting new challenges for themself in different mediums. In the spring they appeared alongside Nicole Kidman on the second season of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, and in December the musical drama Song Sung Blue, in which she stars with Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, will hit theaters.
This week Vogue spoke to Straus about selecting the title for Girl Violence, developing a sense of embodiment through writing music, learning from Jackman on set, and those (now debunked) Christine Baranski dating rumors.
Vogue: How are you planning to celebrate the new album’s release?
King Princess: I have two big plans. My first big plan is tonight, me and my team are getting drinks because everyone put a lot of effort and work into this campaign and there’s been so much kindness and dedication, so I want us all to get a little tipsy together. Number two is my cousin’s wedding; I have the Thom Browne [look] coming soon. It’s in the middle of upstate New York at a lake camp, which is so not giving Thom Browne, and that’s why I’m excited to wear him.
Can you tell me a little about how you came up with the title Girl Violence?
It comes from a lyric from the title track, which is the intro to the album, and it kind of came to me in the form of a question, where I was like, Why does nobody mention girls can be violent?[Collaborator] Nick Long is such an amazing writer—he’s very much the type of man who writes like a lesbian—so we were sitting together and just thinking about that question and the chaos of relationships and how emotional warfare is so powerful. When you think of violence, you think of physical violence, and I think what’s more interesting is this deeply subliminal emotional violence that takes brainpower. We were thinking about that and how to write a record about it.
As you prepare to release this album, what feels most different for you [compared with] when you were releasing your last one, Hold On Baby?
I mean, it’s honestly a huge difference. When I was putting out Hold On Baby, I was living in hospice care with my grandmother while she was passing and posting TikToks from her yard. [Laughs.] I think that that is a huge difference, obviously, just off the bat. But the place that I’m in with this record is really focused and committed and wanting to make art and feeling really proud of it and wanting to promote it. With Hold On Baby, it was like I was putting out a diary and being like, “Just read it.” I think I was way more emotionally shaky. And now I just feel a lot more, like, embodied and in place. I really love my label, and it’s been really fun making all the art.
I love to hear you talk about embodiment. What kinds of rituals do you rely on to feel that way?
I think the only thing that really works for me is writing music, which leads me to believe that having some sort of outlet, whether it’s playing tennis or poetry or something ridiculous—it doesn’t matter, as long as you are passionate about it and it feels like an [outlet] of some sort—that’s the only way I’ve figured out how to feel embodied.
I also have been getting in drag a lot, which, honestly, makes me feel really good. Becoming the woman you aren’t is kind of really amazing. The whole album is me in my current form being tormented by women, so I thought it would be really empowering for the last video [for the song “Jaime”] for me to be the woman, be the tormentor. We got Gio the line cook, who looks like me as boy me, to play me, so he really took that burden, and I got to be the demonic woman, which was really, really powerful. It’s funny how art can do that stuff. It gives you kind of a kick in the ass. Gender performance has been such a big part of King Princess as a project, from “Cheap Queen” on. It was always, you know, “How do we use this human flesh suit as a prop?” I think I’m my most true self when I’m being a clown.
Speaking of performance what was the experience of shooting Song Sung Blue with Hugh Jackman like?
Oh, he is such a good man. It’s really cool for me, as a newcomer in the acting world, to be around people like Hugh Jackman, where you’re like, Oh, this man is a massive, massive, massive star but also first person to set, last person to leave, says hi to every single person. His decorum and the care that he shows for other people was just really impactful. There’s one part where he’s singing, and in the scene I’m watching him sing, and it’s this kind of tragic scene of a daughter watching a father crumble, and the camera was on me, and he was just singing for me so that I could react to it. It was a very special experience.
Do you have plans to act more in the future?
Definitely. I love acting. In the same way that we were talking about expression and dress-up and playing with gender, I feel like acting and music are kind of symbiotic. Acting is such an exercise in using your body, figuring out what’s working, figuring out what’s not, trying things, not being afraid to try things, taking notes, playing off other people, learning from other people. It’s exactly the type of artistic medium that I enjoy. It’s communal, but it’s also internal. I just want to see how far I can push myself.
How did you prepare for your role in Song Sung Blue?
A great tip that I got was to keep a notebook and write out subtext, write out things about your character, write in the voice of your character. So really [it] becomes this creative-writing exercise, which is like songwriting. So that, to me, was like, That clicks.
Okay, I have a Christine Baranski question, but it’s not “Are you dating?”
Amazing.
Why do you think lesbian age-gap relationships have such a hold on us as a queer community?
I was actually talking to [Baranski] about this. First of all, people are just looking for any sort of good news in [the] very dark media cycle that we’re living in—I mean, come on, this week alone is such a crazy true-crime disaster—so that’s one thing. But then there’s also this other phenomenon that I’m really interested in: In so many of the stories of lesbians throughout history that we love, there is something working against them, like the government or the world at large and the culture. There’s usually an age gap in these stories, where there’s an older woman and a younger woman. There’s also usually a kind of secrecy element to it. There’s usually, like, a husband. I think that we’re kind of programmed to love these lesbian archetypes. I don’t know if maybe I’m going too meta lesbian theory…
Never!
Part of me is like, is it that Carol-esque, The Price of Salt archetype that people just love? It’s really interesting to me. I go off on my queer theory spirals to Christine because she’s iconic. She’s an incredible person, and I’m really lucky to have her in my life.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
