It’s been a busy year for Gracie Lawrence. Since May, the 27-year-old musician and actress has released Family Business, the eighth album from her band (aptly named Lawrence), opened for the Rolling Stones, and joined the cast of The Sex Lives of College Girls (Season Three). “Sometimes I’m confused about where I really live,” says Lawrence, who has spent much of this past year on the road.
Born in New York City in 1997, Lawrence can’t remember a time when she wasn’t immersed in the performing arts. “My most salient memories of childhood are of my family playing music in our living room together,” she says, noting how this inspired the title of the band’s second album, Living Room. Though her father—the filmmaker Marc Lawrence—and mother were not musicians, they nurtured a love for music, often singing to their children and introducing them to artists such as Carole King, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and the Beatles.
Lawrence’s older brother, Clyde, a naturally gifted pianist, has always been her musical partner. “I had the privilege of being able to sing all the time when he was playing piano,” she says. The duo honed their craft together, performing at small cafés while Lawrence was still a high-school student at Dalton. “The transition from music being something we did at home to something we did in the world was pretty seamless,” she says.
She made her Broadway debut at 12 years old, acting in Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs, and juggled school with small film and television roles, including a part in her father’s Did You Hear About the Morgans? in 2009 and an appearance in The Americans in 2014. Lawrence learned different skills from the two art forms, viewing music as “personal, and, in many ways, autobiographical,” and acting as an “exercise in stepping into a different mindset.”
Not only did Lawrence get an early start on her career, but on her college experience as well. The band began taking shape before she graduated from Dalton, spending weekends at Brown University, where Clyde was studying. The siblings would perform at Brown parties. “There was beer spilled around me,” she recalls, laughing, “and lights hanging from ceilings in a very potentially fire-hazardous way.” But these moments taught her to play for an unpredictable audience.
Lawrence enrolled as a freshman at Brown in the fall of 2015, but by her second semester she had come to the realization that balancing school and her burgeoning career was almost impossible. So she decided to drop out and focus on the band, which included six of Lawrence and Clyde’s childhood and college friends.
The decision ultimately paid off: nine years later, Lawrence was backstage with the Rolling Stones. “Mick Jagger told me he liked my outfit,” she says, “and I think that’s the best person to ever tell you that they liked your outfit.”
“Mick Jagger told me he liked my outfit.”
The band, which plays what Lawrence describes as “soul pop,” had previously opened for the Jonas Brothers on their 2023 North American tour and performed on TV shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert. With more than 1.6 million monthly Spotify listeners, Lawrence attributes their success to steady, incremental growth rather than a breakout moment.
Lawrence continues to write most of her songs with her brother, with much of their music produced by two of their bandmates, Jordan Cohen and Jonny Koh. In 2019, they became the first band to be signed under Beautiful Mind Records, the label founded by the rapper and singer-songwriter Jon Bellion, who co-produced and co-wrote songs on their last two albums. Their live shows are celebrated for their welcoming and energetic atmosphere, with Clyde leading on keys, Gracie on vocals, and a vibrant horn section. “We exist between a lot of boxes,” she says, confident that their fans stay loyal to them due to their distinctive sound.
Despite having jumped into the adult world at an early age, Lawrence views acting as a way to experience some of the classic milestones she skipped. This is especially the case with The Sex Lives of College Girls, where she plays a transfer student at Essex College named Kasey, a promise ring–wearing Southern belle, who replaces Leighton (played by Renée Rapp) in a dorm suite with Kimberly (played by Pauline Chalamet), Bela (played by Amrit Kaur), and Whitney (played by Alyah Chanelle Scott). As a longtime fan of the show, Lawrence couldn’t resist auditioning. Two days later, she received a call asking if she could move to Los Angeles for a three-month shoot. “I became so close with the other women on the show that there was this sort of collegiate feel,” she says.
In January, Lawrence will get back on the road with her band for a world tour across Australia, Europe, and the U.S. to promote Family Business. Her key to success? She only needs four to five hours of sleep—for now. “As I get older, that’s getting really challenging.”
The Sex Lives of College Girls is available for streaming on Max
Jeanne Malle is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL
