Maya Hawke is a nepo baby. She’s the 25-year-old daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. One nice thing is that she seems equally close to both of her parents, because I remember that their marriage did not end on a high note. Still, Uma and Ethan managed to figure out a way to coparent successfully and Maya and Levon both seem like decent people. But yeah, Maya had tons of connections in the industry and her parents helped her and nurtured her artistic/musical/actor’s side. Maya doesn’t deny that, and for what it’s worth, I think this is how more nepo babies should handle those questions – an acknowledgement and a shrug, like what are we really going to do? Maya recently chatted with the Times of London about all of this and more. Some highlights:

Whether she feels like she deserves to be where she is professionally: “‘Deserves’ is a complicated word. 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. And I know that my not doing it wouldn’t help anyone. 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.” She is comfortable about picking option B, even if it opens her up to jokes. “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.”

Working with her dad on ‘Wildcat’: “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.”

After her parents’ divorce, she lived with her dad at the Hotel Chelsea: “I ran a lemonade stand in the lobby and there was a vacant elevator shaft in the back of my dad’s closet that I used to love to hang out in. He used to make these incredible treasure maps that we would follow around the Chelsea and the neighbourhood. It was a magical time.”

She wanted to be a stage actress: Hawke’s first ambition was to act on the stage, “but I had this counterweight of being desperate to become financially independent.”

Getting a role on Stranger Things: “I feel so lucky that my, for lack of a better word, breakout role was this smart, funny, awkward and goofy person. I didn’t have to be a femme fatale — not that I have what it takes to be one.”

Whether Maya hesitated working with Quentin Tarantino, given Uma’s sometimes tortured history with QT: “I had a lot of different conversations around it with my mum and it was always wildly supported…[he] had been such an influential part of my mum’s life was really meaningful to me”. In 2021, Tarantino raised the possibility of making Kill Bill 3, saying: “Being able to cast Uma and her daughter Maya would be f***ing exciting.” Hawke admits that nepotism influenced her being cast as Flower Child, one of Charles Manson’s followers, in Once upon a Time … in Hollywood. “I’ve been wildly made fun of for this clip when I said, on the red carpet, that I auditioned,” she says. Although she did make an audition tape, “I never meant to imply that I didn’t get the part for nepotistic reasons — I think I totally did”. Tarantino, she adds, loves a bit of postmodern casting and “was making an active effort to cast a lot of young Hollywood.”

Inside baseball: “People have accused it of being inside baseball when they make these stories about the industry itself, but I just love them. Maybe it’s because my whole life has been inside baseball.”

[From The Times]

“I think I’m comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway.” I get that. She wanted to be an actress and she got there on talent and work… and connections and famous parents. It’s not about “deserving,” and I appreciate that she acknowledges that “there are so many people who deserve to have this kind of life who don’t.” And incidentally, I do think she’s talented and watchable. She does have that indefinable “it factor.” I would probably feel differently about this interview if I thought she was just some hacky trust fund kid with the on-screen appeal of a head of lettuce.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images and Avalon.red.