Maya Hawke is the daughter of two Hollywood greats — Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke — and she made it clear in a recent interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times that she’s fully OK with any privilege that might come with that. “There are so many people who deserve to have this kind of life who don’t, but I think I’m comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway,” she said. “And I know that my not doing it wouldn’t help anyone.”
Hawke, who is a talented actor in her own right, continued, “I saw two paths when I was first starting, and one of them was: change your name, get a nose job and go to open casting roles.”
Audiences that enjoy her work are thankful Hawke went with option B: leaning all the way in. “It’s OK to be made fun of when you’re in rarefied air. It’s a lucky place to be. My relationships with my parents are really honest and positive, and that supersedes anything anyone can say about it,” she explained.
Hawke, who is currently filming the final season of “Stranger Things” in Atlanta, has worked with both of her parents on different projects in the past year. She starred opposite Thurman in “The Kill Room” and filmed the Flannery O’Connor biopic “Wildcat” with her dad, who directed.
Of her dad, who she attempted to call “Ethan” on set before switching back to “Dad,” she shared, “We were both being asked constantly if we were nervous to work with each other but we weren’t nervous, because I spent my whole life making art with that guy.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Hawke spoke about spending time with her dad in New York at the Hotel Chelsea following her parents’ divorce. She ran a lemonade stand in the lobby of the same hotel where Sid Vicious was arrested following the stabbing of Nancy Spungen, Bob Dylan wrote “Blonde on Blonde” and that Andy Warhol’s menagerie of artists frequented, and her dad “used to make these incredible treasure maps that we would follow around the Chelsea and the neighborhood. It was a magical time.”
Hawke was tight-lipped about what to expect from “Stranger Things” for its fifth and final season, but she did say she’s not worried about what the Duffer Brothers have in store for fans. As she put it, “Every season there has been something where I’m like, ‘Really, that’s how it happens? Are you sure?’ And then I watch it and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s perfect.’”
Read the full interview with Maya Hawke in The Sunday Times.
