It’s a rainy day in New York City, and Maya Hawke is telling me about her short-lived attempt to call her father ‘Ethan’ on the set of their new film, “Wildcat.” We’re escaping the downpour at a cozy neighborhood restaurant in Chelsea, and sitting across from the striking father-daughter duo is like having a front-row seat to the royal family of art-house cinema.
“I started using his name — ‘Ethan’ — to be like, ‘I’m a professional,’” the 25-year-old “Stranger Things” actress says. “And then I realized it was actually more distracting to people. They’d be like, ‘Why are you doing that?’ So I mostly called him ‘Dad.’”
Such is life when you’re a Gen Z “It” girl whose father is a Gen X icon. But there’s very little celebrity polish to the pair when we meet in the dog days of August. Maya, who has modeled for Calvin Klein and been a fixture on red carpets, is dressed down. She’s draped in a scarf and wearing a T-shirt designed by her younger sister at sleepaway camp, with her hair tied back in a bun and dramatic bangs neatly in place. She’s the personification of that old high school biology concept the Punnett square: There’s no mistaking that she’s a combination of her father, Ethan Hawke, today dressed in jeans and a trucker hat from a thrift store, and her mother, Uma Thurman. Her parents got married after meeting on the set of 1997’s dystopian sci-fi thriller “Gattaca.” They had two kids before separating in 2003 and divorcing in 2005. (Maya’s younger brother, Levon, 21, also is an actor.)
“We’re like the boring, indie Kardashians,” Maya jokes.
The dynamic is playful. In Maya, there’s no trace of an eye-rolling 20-something embarrassed by her dad. (Although it probably helps when the dad in question has epitomized arty cool since the ’90s, is friends with Pedro Pascal and Gwyneth Paltrow and has the game to publicly flirt with Rihanna courtside at Madison Square Garden.) Instead, this meeting feels like catching up with old friends who share remarkably similar tastes, looks, senses of humor and sensibilities as artists. Throughout our conversation, the two often finish each other’s sentences and stories. And Ethan, like a proud dad, frequently validates Maya’s answers with a heartfelt “Well said.”
As we’re getting settled at the table, the waiter brings an Arnold Palmer for Ethan and a green juice for Maya. “I’ve been so good with my vegetarianism this summer,” the older Hawke says as he looks over the menu. The younger declares the same, before promptly ordering a round of oysters and hamburgers. Maya assembles her meal with precision, laying french fries dipped in ketchup on her medium-rare burger, while Ethan discards the bun and pops chunks of meat in his mouth with his bare hands. They have to approach the discussion about their careers with a certain delicacy, since many topics, like the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things,” are off limits because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
As they tell it, the idea for “Wildcat,” which premieres at this year’s Toronto Film Festival and takes a kaleidoscopic look at the life and work of a young Flannery O’Connor, came from Maya, who has a longtime fascination with the Southern Gothic writer.
