Kate Nash doc Underestimate the Girl is a brutally honest look at her rollercoaster career

In the thirteen years since Kate Nash rocketed to worldwide attention with her 2007 debut, Made of Bricks, her career has ping-ponged wildly, from her initial breakout success to being dropped from her label just a few years later, leaving her broke and selling her own clothes for money. Amy Goldstein’s new documentary, Underestimate the Girl, follows Nash primarily through the lean years following her being dropped by her label, as she attempts to return to a more commercial sound and re-enter the mainstream pop world.

Nash was just 18 when her career first took off; her songs first gained traction on MySpace, where she amassed enough followers to land her a record deal. With a straight-forward delivery and craft for pop hooks, songs like the smash hit “Foundations” resonated hugely with fans, and Nash was quickly sent out on endless tours and churned through the PR machine for the next few years. A  few years later, Nash’s difficult experiences with fame and celebrity pushed her towards a more aggressive musical style, which led to a split from her label. Deciding to see if she could make a go of her career without the financial and publicity leg-up provided by a record company, Nash embarks on a DIY album and tour with a new all-women band, essentially re-starting her career from the ground up.

The first half of Underestimate the Girl follows Nash on tour and shows her determination to stay true to her own vision for her art and career. It’s a sort of “us against the world” mentality as Nash and her bandmates travel across the world, playing small venues and scraping by. Goldstein makes this all feel like a fun travelogue at first, but reality begins to creep in as Nash soon realizes the financial burden she’s under by funding the tour and recording sessions for her upcoming album. She decides that the best path forward is to get back into the mainstream pop world, so she hires a manager that promises to help her find new avenues to make money in the rapidly-evolving music marketplace.

Said manager’s initiatives see Nash performing an awkward show to the employees of a marketing company, and setting her up to write for other artists (a common practice for many pop stars). Things seem to be on the right track for Nash to successfully navigate a new path in the music business under her new manager’s guidance until things go horribly awry towards the middle of the film, in a cruel twist of fate that seems all-too-common in the entertainment business. Shattered by the loss of trust, Nash has to rebuild once again, forced to sell her own clothing to make ends meet and shill Star Wars jewelry for a nerd-focused home shopping network.

Above all else, Underestimate the Girl is a story about determination, even when the circumstances seem insurmountable. In a career that has seen wildly divergent highs and lows, Nash keeps pushing forward, adapting to her new realities with the sort of can-do attitude that she attributes to her working-class background. Although Nash remains the focus throughout, the film ends up becoming a lesson in the music business machine more than a true examination of Nash’s life and career. We learn about aspects of her upbringing through some quick interview footage with family and friends, but the focus remains on the difficult path for women in the music industry and what it takes to be able to successfully pursue one’s own voice (and the compromises it may take to get to that place).

The film shows Nash looking to expand her career options; towards the end of the film we see her hopefully sending off an audition tape for Netflix’s G.L.O.W., the wildly successful show about female wrestlers that Nash has starred in for three seasons now. It’s a fitting tribute to Nash’s determination and work ethic, and proves that her story is far from over.

Underestimate the Girl is available to rent through Alamo On Demand. Kate Nash will participate in a live Q&A and performance following the screening on Saturday, May 23rd at 9:00 pm EST. The film is scheduled to receive a limited theatrical run this August.