Interview with Hunter McGrady
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Hunter McGrady
Los Angeles-born model who appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue and was its 2018 rookie of the year. She also acted in Shrill.
Source: Dr. Mayim Bialik on YouTube
These answers are taken from Hunter McGrady: Redefining Beauty, Mantras & Body Positivity on Dr. Mayim Bialik's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
When did you start modeling?
I did modeling when I was a kid. I did some things here and there, and then I was just a regular kid. And then at 16 I really dove in and wanted to really pursue it as a career.
I was also a late bloomer. When I was 16, when I first started modeling, I was a size two. I'm six feet tall, I was 114 [pounds]. I was very tiny and I was gangly. At the time everyone in my school called me fat, so I believed I was fat. I kept getting told by agents and by jobs: keep slimming down, your hips need to come a little bit more down. And I was like, I physically can't do any more. I can't go any further than this.
What drew you to a career as a model?
I hate to say it, but my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, my sister, they are all models. My grandmother, she was the beginning of it all. I always grew up in the industry. My dad is still currently an actor. He's been in the business for 39 years. My mom was a model, and my aunt, my grandma, so I've always been around it my whole entire life.
And I always wanted to do that. I was one of those kids. I think for five minutes I wanted to do marine biology, and then I was like, I want to do modeling. So right out of the gate it just started for me, at a young age.
What was a great moment for you as a model?
I was literally shooting in Brazil, flying back when it came out. They didn't have any of it on stands in Brazil because it's more of an American magazine. And I remember it dropping and being on the plane and seeing my Google Alerts. Literally every time I refreshed my email, my Google Alerts were coming in, and I was like, holy cow, this is insane. And then from there I literally did press for three months.
I really had to fake it till you make it. I really had to go in acting like, oh yeah, this is totally normal. Everyone's talking about me, my naked body is plastered everywhere, I'm doing interviews in L.A. and New York and Nashville, around the world, this is totally normal. I really had to act like I have been doing this forever, because in this business that's almost expected from you. They don't really let you ease into it.
How did your career as a model unfold?
The last straw for me was I booked a t-shirt job. I drove down to downtown L.A. with my mom. I was so excited. I was like, this is it, people at school are gonna eat their hat, they've been making fun of me. I show up on set and they all are staring at me. Finally the producer comes over and she's like, "We're so sorry, we didn't realize how big you were." My mom literally was like, "You are gonna owe us gas money and you're gonna buy us lunch." They sent me home. They didn't even give me a chance to try anything on to see if it would maybe fit. That was kind of the end for me for this quote-unquote straight size.
So I took some years off. I did some therapy. I did some real learning about my body, not for what it looks like but what it can do for me, and I grew into my body. 17, 18, 19 years old, I really grew into the body that I was meant to be in. And then at 19 I learned about plus-size modeling, and from there I got signed as a plus-size model. I was like, wait, I can be in my body and be comfortable and still pursue my dream? This is crazy.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a model?
I kind of went into it like, I knew that I was gonna get the great photos, whatever, but I also was like, this is not just for me. I want women to be able to open this and be able to see, oh, I can relate to her body. Because at the time I was simultaneously opening up on social media about body struggles and things like that, and learning to love my body. So it really kind of collided perfectly into this moment of, oh, this is great, this is exactly what I want women to see: a larger body also can be sexy.
Has your career as a model progressed the way you expected?
There's something in the plus-size world called the perfect plus. Basically it is the perfect hourglass, size 14, flat stomach, your chest is larger than your waist, but you're this perfect curvy Jessica Rabbit. That's the perfect plus and that's what works.
And funny enough, when I shot for Sports Illustrated in 2016, I was a size 16, kind of teetering on 18. After I had shot that, my agent at the time said, you need to lose weight, because you're now getting into the category where you're not going to work, because brands aren't going to hire you. I was in the press every single day. I was at the height of my career. And the sad thing is that she was absolutely right. I lost so many clients because I had gained weight. Even some strictly plus-size retailers that just sell plus didn't hire me because I was about a size 16, 18.
Tell me about a shoot or a show that was hard to pull off. What was it and why was it challenging?
My very first shoot with [Sports Illustrated], I was one of the last models to do body paint. So when I tell you I was naked, I was literally just wearing body paint. They told me, I think, a couple weeks before. It was three women and it took 12 hours. The team is, I would say, 98.5 percent women. Very women-led and driven.
You get sand in your lady parts. And there's couples watching me who are on vacation. To the naked eye you can't tell that I'm in body paint, unless I tell, and people still try to fight me on it and go, "That is not body paint." And I'm like, I was in there for 12 hours. There's couples watching me shooting, and I'm literally running around and everything's kind of flopping. We were literally done in two hours shooting, which is rare, because now that I've shot swim, they're usually about eight hours long.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
I literally had to go to therapy to figure out how to not have this mindset. It really took a lot of years. Affirmations were huge for me. I started when I was 16 years old. My therapist at the time said, "I want you to stand in front of your mirror naked. Slick your hair back after you get out of the shower, completely naked. I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself what you want to love about your body. Doesn't have to be what you love about it, because right now it's not a lot. And I want you to do this every day." That changed my life. I cried the first probably 10 times.
When I first started this, I would say things like, I want to love my hips, I want to love my arms, I want to love my legs, my bigger feet, my tall frame. It really was focused on what I was looking at. And now it's gone so deep, I'm like, I want to appreciate the way my kidneys are working. It truly transformed the way that I looked at my body.
Hunter McGrady's Full Biography
Hunter McGrady was born on 4 May 1993 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Shrill (2019), Girls Gotta Eat (2018) and Mayim Bialik's Breakdown (2020). She has been married to Brian Keys since 16 June 2019. They have two children.