- - Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale Feared Band's Early Success Was a 'Freak Incident.' Then the 2026 Grammys Came Calling (Exclusive)

Rachel DeSantisJanuary 4, 2026 at 2:00 AM

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Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale opens up about her band's three Grammy nominations at the 2026 Grammy Awards

The group is up for Best Alternative Music Album, Best Album Cover and Best Alternative Music Performance

“It’s just crazy to see your band’s name next to legitimate artists who’ve been in the industry a long time and who’ve maybe inspired you to make music,” she says

Rhian Teasdale of the English band Wet Leg typically shows up to work obligations with her four bandmates. But today, on set in Los Angeles, she has a different collaborator: a stuffed animal dog that doubles as a purse. She’s named him Yam.

“It was really cute and fluffy maybe 10 hours ago, but then I was left to my own devices in my hotel room and I ripped him apart, took out all of his stuffing, turned him inside out,” she explains. “And now he looks like this.”

Such is life as a creative — sometimes you’re performing for thousands of screaming fans, other times you’re alone in your hotel room, inside-outing your flea market pooch purse.

Regardless, Teasdale’s creative endeavors have served her well. Two years after she and Wet Leg won two Grammy Awards for their self-titled debut album, they’re overcoming the so-called sophomore slump with a bang: Their second album, Moisturizer, is up for three Grammys at the 2026 show in L.A. on Feb. 1.

Per Ole Hagen/Redferns

Rhian Teasdale (center), Hester Chambers and Henry Holmes of Wet Leg performing in Oslo in August 2025

“Literally two seconds before we got the call, I was saying to [bassist] Ellis [Durand], ‘It would be really nice to get nominated because it is really fun to get to go and be a part of it. But.. this time, it’s not our turn. It’s someone else’s turn,’” she says. “And then when we got the call, it was like, ‘What?’ We were just kind of making peace with not being invited along this year.”

But invited they are. In addition to Teasdale’s nomination for Best Album Cover, Wet Leg — which also includes guitarist Hester Chambers, guitarist and keyboard player Josh Mobaraki, bassist Durand and drummer Henry Holmes — is up for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Alternative Music Performance for Moisturizer standout “Mangetout.”

“It’s just crazy to see your band’s name next to legitimate artists who’ve been in the industry a long time and who’ve maybe inspired you to make music,” she says. “We were very much prepared for, ‘The first album was just this mad, freak incident.’ We weren't really expecting that for album two, so it’s just really nice.”

Domino Recording Co. Ltd.

Moisturizer album cover

If Teasdale, 32, still sounds somewhat flummoxed by Wet Leg’s meteoric rise to fame, it’s understandable. She and Chambers met as teenage classmates on the Isle of Wight, a relatively small island off the coast of England that’s hardly a hip indie rock scene.

After falling in love with music by way of the iTunes library she snagged off her older siblings, Teasdale began writing songs and, before long, was performing them around England. She didn’t much enjoy being a solo artist, though, and she eventually stopped playing music altogether.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. It makes me really sad. It’s a stupid endeavor. Why am I doing this to myself? It’s not making me happy,'" Teasdale recalls.

That’s where Chambers stepped in and saved the day, paving the way for all to come. Teasdale had a few shows left that she was obligated to play, so she asked her friend to come along and play guitar. The two had so much fun that they never looked back.

Thomas Niedermueller/Getty

Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg performing in Germany in June 2025

“I was like, ‘Oh, do you know what? I actually really do like this, and I actually don’t ever want this to end. And I think it would be more fun if we both played guitar, and it would be fun to make music that maybe people might want to dance to,’” she says.

Everyone in the group had a day job at some point. Durand was a scaffolder, Holmes a delivery driver and Mobaraki worked at a café. Chambers worked for her family business, and Teasdale went from waitressing to doing styling for commercials (Wet Leg released its first album as a duo, but added longtime friends and bandmates into the fold later on).

When it came to making a second album, Teasdale says the group felt a “sense of urgency” to get to it, especially after endlessly fielding the “irritating” question of whether they feared a sophomore slump.

To tune out the noise, the group did their best to recreate the environment in which they’d made Wet Leg, which this time around meant hunkering down in a countryside rental house.

The days spent working on Moisturizer were largely unstructured but often involved jam sessions, tea breaks, walks outside and watching movies like The Shining and Jennifer’s Body (the latter inspired a song on the record).

“It was the most natural thing to write the second album together. We’ve all got matching friendship rings [that say] ‘Wet Leg Forever,’” Teasdale says. “It’s definitely good being in a band because I think you always are your own worst critic. If it was just me on my own, I’d be like, ‘Is this a stupid idea? Yeah, it probably is,’ and that would be the end of it. So I think it’s really important for encouraging each other.”

Coming up, Wet Leg is looking forward to a number of tour dates, including Coachella, and of course the Grammys after-parties. (Teasdale says the band wants to hire a magician, specifically a “scary” one).

“When people say, ‘Oh, you should appreciate being at school, those are the best days of your lives,’ I don't know,” she says. “I think this is it. I think we’re in it right now.”

The 2026 Grammy Awards will air live on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday, Feb. 1.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”