USA TODAY International Edition
Hawke navigates the pitfalls of fame
Maya Hawke played the best show of her life. Then the apocalypse happened.
In mid- March, just four days before New York went into COVID- 19 lockdown, the actress/ singer performed an intimate concert at the city’s famed Joe’s Pub. Her father, actor Ethan Hawke, was in full embarrassing dad mode, clapping and proudly calling her name from a table midvenue. Afterward, she went to a bar in Greenwich Village where she shamelessly played early 2000s pop on a jukebox, much to her musician pals’ chagrin.
“That was my last night out,” Hawke laments on a recent Zoom call from the Hamptons, where she’s quarantining with her other famous parent, actress Uma Thurman. ( Her mom and dad divorced in 2005 after seven years of marriage, but she is close with both.)
“I’ve probably played 10 shows ever in my whole life, and that was the first show where I really felt like a musician,” she says. “I just felt incredibly in sync with my band, and in control of the way I sang and talked to people. I’m normally in such a state of utter panic, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
On Friday, Hawke released her debut album, “Blush,” a 12- song collection of playful, evocative letters to her friends, family and lovers. Co- written and produced by Jesse Harris ( Lana Del Rey, Norah Jones), the intimately personal music is reminiscent of Hawke’s songwriting heroes: Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple and Taylor Swift, among them.
But unlike Swift’s “Folklore,” “Blush” was written “in probably the least- quarantine three years of my life,” Hawke says. “It’s definitely about seeing people and touching people and having experiences.”
Hawke, 22, who appeared in last year’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Stranger Things” Season 3, talks to USA TODAY about music, celebrity and more.
Question: What’s the first song you ever wrote?
Maya Hawke: When I was a little kid, I rewrote the lyrics to a Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana song, “Life’s What You Make It.” It’s also the first concert I ever went to and it was pretty incredible. I was a really big fan. But I was obsessed with water imagery, so I wrote something like, “Even when the river is rolling in the wrong direction, you’ve got to swim through it.” I don’t know. It was some sort of strugglebased water metaphor. So that was probably the first song I ever wrote and then I really started writing songs a lot.
Q: What drew you to Hannah Montana?
Hawke: I think because I grew up in the public eye, there was something about the idea that she had these public and private versions of herself that seemed like a fantasy to me. That you could be out there in the world expressing yourself and making art and still have a private life was always a very romantic idea to me. I could have tried to create ( a stage persona) and done a whole thing, but that would’ve
felt really contrived to me, because there’s no world in which anyone wouldn’t figure it out. I did drop the Thurman in my name, because Thurman- Hawke was my name in high school. There was something about, in my professional life, having a marginally different name that felt good.
Q: What have been the biggest challenges so far of navigating fame?
Hawke: I definitely thought I was prepared. I thought if anyone could handle it, I could, because I thought I’d been handling it my whole life. But it’s different when it’s you ( that’s famous). It’s complicated that in order to be an artist or an actor or a singer, you have to also deal with a certain amount of being a celebrity. Social media has ( made it so) you can’t just be a famous actor, you also are a famous person. So I’ve definitely put a lot of effort and energy into trying to figure out how to best use my platform. I have not figured it out yet.
Another ( challenge) is the way it affects your relationships, even if it’s just like, “I don’t want to go to the beach with you, Maya, because when you go to the beach, you get paparazzied.” So it complicates things a bit. But I’m by no means that famous – I can put on my mask and my sunglasses and I’m usually fine. So I don’t know. The criticism and the reviews are hard, and if you read internet comments you’re a moron, because people are so mean.
I remember when I was 14, I went to an event with my mom and there were pictures. I decided to read the comments and they were like, “Oh, too bad she doesn’t look like her mom. God, they’ve got all that money and they’re not going to fix her teeth? She needs a nose job.” And I was 14! I hadn’t gone through puberty. It was going to get better, but I didn’t know that at the time.
Q: Have your parents given you advice on how to deal with attention?
Hawke: A lot of the things that are the most difficult for me are things they didn’t deal with. But then a lot of things they did, and their advice is basically avoid it. “Don’t read reviews, don’t read comments, don’t have an Instagram, just don’t. Bye. You’re an actor.” But if you don’t have an Instagram and you audition for something, studio executives will look at that and be like, “Well, Pollyanna McPhee has 4 million Instagram followers. We loved Maya’s tape, but Pollyanna will really be able to help us advertise this movie.” It’s a changing business.
Q: Any idea yet when “Stranger Things” production will resume? ( Hawke plays Robin Buckley, a fanfavorite introduced last season.)
Hawke: There was a date; it got pushed. There’s a new date, but it’ll probably be pushed again. Cases in Georgia are still not dropping, and that’s where we film. But I hope soon. I had the most fun I’ve ever had on the “Stranger Things” set during the two weeks of filming before lockdown happened. I was really starting to feel who Robin is and finding more humor and freedom in her. I’m really excited to go back to that.