Being the daughter of a TV star didn’t make adolescence any easier for Awkward’s Greer Grammer. Like many teens, the offspring of Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer said she felt that she never quite fit in.
Grammer, who grew up in affluent Malibu, California, living with her makeup artist mom Barrie Buckner, remembers that, at 12 years old, a girl in her dance class asked how many Louis Vuitton bags she owned. Although Grammer had none, she lied and said one. The girl made fun of her anyway.
“I had chores and I worked, and I didn’t have a lot of money,” Grammer tells Yahoo. “My parents didn’t buy me things just to buy me things. They bought me things if I got good grades or if I got a lead role in a musical or something, but I wasn’t just a spoiled kid.”
The now 23-year-old actress wasn’t hurting for anything, though. Just as vividly, she remembers a trip to the movies when she was 7 or 8 with her mom, when they ran into Greer’s friend Josephine and Josephine’s dad, who happens to be director James Cameron.
“We were with Jim and Josephine and somebody had asked for a picture with Jim or his autograph, and I turned to my mom, and I said, ‘Why are people asking about Josephine’s dad? He’s not even on TV,’” she recalls. “I knew that Josephine’s dad made 'Titanic,’ but I didn’t really get [what directors did] at that point.”
The Princess of Malibu
Although Grammer wasn’t completely familiar with the inner workings of showbiz just yet, she already knew she wanted to act. She had spent time on the set of her dad’s show and on the sets of movies where her mom was working. The future performer took on her own roles in the theater from the time she was 5 and began doing pageants as a teen, eventually winning Miss Teen Malibu. Her big break came when she was cast in the MTV show about the adventures of an unpopular high schooler (played by Ashley Rickards) in 2011. Grammer plays Lissa, a gregarious and super religious cheerleader often considered ditsy.
Related: 'Awkward’ Showrunners: Season 5 May Not Be the MTV Comedy’s Last
“I was very much Lissa my freshman year of high school and ongoing,” Grammer reveals. “I’m naturally a bubbly person, so very bubbly, very naive, very stereotypical blond girl, I think. I wore mini jean skirts and pink sweatshirts and was very girly.”
In the new and perhaps final season of Awkward, premiering Aug. 31, Lissa and the gang wrap up their senior year with the senior bonfire, the senior prank, and the prom. They’re the kind of events Grammer experienced in her own high school years, when she attended an arts academy for the first half and the public Malibu High — the same school attended by Sean Penn and model Gigi Hadid — for the second. Grammer remembers doing normal, teenage things at the time, such as watching the big teen show of the day, The O.C.
“The O.C. was my favorite show in middle and high school,” she says. “I knew every episode. I have the O.C. board game. I had all the box sets on DVD. I was a super fan.”
Grammer identified somewhat with the character of Marissa (portrayed by Mischa Barton) because of that whole misfit thing, but she was a fan of sidekick Summer, something that would help her later. The actress will step into the role Rachel Bilson played on TV for a sold-out, one-night-only performance of the O.C. Musical on Aug. 30 at the Montalban Theater in L.A.
“I loved Marissa. We had this joke, my best friend and I, that I was Marissa and she was Summer,” Grammer shares. “But I loved Summer. I don’t think anybody disliked Summer, which I think is the difference. There were many people who loved or hated Marissa, and everybody just equally loved Summer.”
Unlike Marissa, Grammer survived to attend college and studied theater at the University of Southern California. It’s where she was in a sorority and met her boyfriend of almost three years before graduating in May 2014, after years of juggling school and her after-school job.
Following Her Father Into the Family Business
She got a boost in name recognition this January after she was named Miss Golden Globe, an honor that’s bestowed upon the child of a celebrity. As part of the gig, the former pageant queen passed out trophies and led winners off the stage of the telecast.
“I feel like I came out of the womb acting and playing dress up and playing characters, so I feel like I would’ve done that regardless [of my parents] but it definitely helped seeing them in this business and going to set,” Grammer explains of her decision to become an actress.
Related: Greer Grammer, Kelsey Grammer’s Daughter and 'Awkward’ Star, Named Miss Golden Globe 2015: 'My Dad Is So Proud!’
Now that she’s chosen to make her career in entertainment, Grammer admits that sharing the last name of an Emmy and Golden Globe winner helped. Still, she doesn’t give her Grammer name all the credit.
“I’m pretty sure my name got me my first agent, which I’m very grateful for… but there are other aspects of it,” Grammer notes. “I can go into a room and get into a room because of my name, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get the job. I still have to equally fight and do my best, improve myself to get a part. I have to be good. I haven’t found that it’s been as easy, maybe it has been for other people who’ve gotten their start and been related to somebody.
"The way my dad sees it… he’s like, 'You have my last name and that’s already a stepping stone.’ But he really makes my [half-sister Spencer Grammer] and I do this on our own, so it really is that we don’t have any more connections than the last name, and for that, it goes either way. It can be great, and it can also be a curse, because some people are like, 'Wow, you have some big shoes to fill,’ and it’s like, 'Oh great, thank you.’”
She hasn’t been kicked out of too many of those rooms lately. Besides the new season of her show and the musical, Grammer just filmed Lifetime’s upcoming movie about the women in the life of Charles Manson, Manson’s Lost Girls. In the TV movie scheduled for 2016, she portrays Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted of murder and conspiracy for participating in the August 1969 murder of two Los Angelenos, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, the night after the infamous murder of Sharon Tate and four others.
“When I got the audition, I was already interested in the Manson murders in general,” says Grammer, who was born in 1992. “I think it’s a really fascinating time, and it’s kind of one of the first big media cult killings in American history.”
She was excited, sure, but there was no name dropping.
“I went about it the old-fashioned way,” Grammer smiles. “Lifetime contacted my agent.”
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