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- [00:01]
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- [00:32]
Rachel Martin
What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?
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Maya Hawke
A really big one that sounds silly, but was. I needed to unlearn that I was crazy.
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Rachel Martin
Say more.
- [00:43]
Maya Hawke
I had this kind of idea that I was crazy because I was spending a lot of time with people older than me and behaving like a young person and who was figuring things out and making mistakes and learning a lot. And I had to realize you were not crazy. You were young.
- [01:02]
Rachel Martin
I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is Maya Hawke.
- [01:19]
Maya Hawke
I have ease with my dynamic with sadness. We have a. We have a good. We have good communication, like. And I'm not afraid of sadness.
- [01:32]
Rachel Martin
When season five of Stranger Things opens, an evil demon is still trying to destroy the universe. And Maya Hawke's character, Robin, is working as a DJ at the local radio station. In that moment, all Robin wants to do is play Pretty in Pink by the Psychedelic Furs and dedicate it to her girlfriend. Music is her antidote to the ills that have befallen her world. And it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that Maya Hawke has found her own solace in music. It was the other half of her creative brain during the six years she worked on Stranger Things. And she is still at it. Maya's newest album is called Maitreya Corso, and I am so very happy to welcome Maya Hawk to Wildcard. Hi.
- [02:11]
Maya Hawke
Hi. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:18]
Rachel Martin
So you know how this goes. We're just gonna start. Round one, Memories.
- [02:21]
Maya Hawke
I'm ready.
- [02:21]
Rachel Martin
I'm ready.
- [02:21]
Maya Hawke
Let's go.
- [02:22]
Rachel Martin
First three cards. Maya, you pick one, two, or three.
- [02:28]
Maya Hawke
I'm being called a three.
- [02:29]
Rachel Martin
Yep. When was the moment you felt proud of yourself as a kid?
- [02:34]
Maya Hawke
That's a great question, and I'm trying to think about my answer. I feel like there are moments it's Hard to separate one's memories or stories they've heard about themselves as a kid that they are proud of now. I'm now very proud that I used to let kids down the slide before me. Like, I would stand at the top of the slide. I was really uncomfortable with anyone standing behind me. I, like, didn't want the pressure on my turn. I didn't want to have to go so fast. Cause kids were waiting. So I would just let kids go in front of me. I totally relate to that. So that I didn't have to have, like, anyone riding my tail, you know, on the slide. Right. Cause they come up fast, and then
- [03:19]
Rachel Martin
you're like, I was trying to slide at my own pace. Yeah.
- [03:23]
Maya Hawke
And I'm proud. So I'm proud of that now. But I remember being proud. I was cast as one of three Jennies in the first school play I ever did, which was Jenny in the School for Cats. And I was very proud to be one of the three Jennies. I had no expectation that that would happen. And I remember just being like, wow. I didn't think that. I didn't think that anyone liked me. You know, Like, I didn't think my teachers saw me. And it was this moment of feeling like I was seen. And so, yeah, that's a moment I remember feeling proud. And then a moment I'm proud of. Two for one.
- [04:03]
Rachel Martin
I have so many questions. Why were there three Jennies?
- [04:07]
Maya Hawke
Because don't you remember from school plays, when there aren't enough parts for all the kids, they take the big parts and they divide them up. So, like, one does act one, act two, and act three.
- [04:18]
Rachel Martin
So Jenny was like, the lead. You were just the one of.
- [04:20]
Maya Hawke
Jenny was the lead.
- [04:20]
Rachel Martin
The trifecta of Jenny's.
- [04:22]
Maya Hawke
Yes, yes, yes. I was act two. Jenny.
- [04:25]
Rachel Martin
There will be people who hear this and think to themselves, maya, but why didn't your teach. Why did you think you weren't gonna be good at acting when your parents, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, are very good at acting?
- [04:38]
Maya Hawke
Well, I didn't really want to be an actor at that point in time. That was a similar point in time that I got made fun of on the school bus because there were other little girls who went to Chapin who.
- [04:48]
Rachel Martin
Wait, what was Chapin?
- [04:50]
Maya Hawke
I went to Brearley, and Brearley and Chapin were rivals. So there were other girls who went to Chapin on the bus. And they were like, you. Like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said I wanted to be a Veterinarian or a farmer. And they said, that's so dumb. You should want to be a movie star. And I said, why? And they were like, because your parents are movie stars. And I was like, what? I didn't really have a. An awareness of that at the time at all. That was kind of the beginning of my awareness of understanding. Good for your parents. Good for your parents. Good for your parents. Yes. Pretty cool. I mean, not quite as impressive as Kate Bush's kids, who apparently found out Kate Bush was Kate Bush when her song was used on the Stranger Things soundtrack. Yeah.
- [05:35]
Rachel Martin
Wow.
- [05:36]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, that's pretty crazy. But so I was a little earlier than that.
- [05:41]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [05:42]
Maya Hawke
I always found that I was socially happiest in the artistic environments of school, in play rehearsal, in like creative writing classes. That was where I was socially most comfortable. And so that really pulled me in that direction before I'd even had as a twinkle in my eye of what I might want to do professionally.
- [06:04]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, it was just a good time.
- [06:07]
Maya Hawke
It. It was just where people were open hearted with each other, you know, it was just where people were willing to play and they weren't like, you look stupid in that, you know, or why can't you do that? And it was where there was no pressure on me to read because it was all about spoken language and memorized language and that I was really good at. And so I don't know, it was like. But I think I also grew up kind of understanding art as something in the water of everybody's life, which I now know is not true. Yeah, but I thought it was just this is something everybody does as their hobby. My parents, of course, they are doing the school play too. When I go with them to set. This is. Everybody participates in the arts. And then some people do other stuff for money, some people don't have to do other stuff for money, but everyone does. The arts was kind of my understanding, so it seemed totally normal. Of course I'd do the school play. Everybody does the arts.
- [07:04]
Rachel Martin
I love that so much. Also, we should just note, because you said it, reading was hard and you've talked about that for you.
- [07:11]
Maya Hawke
Oh, yeah. Well, I was. I'm dyslexic. And the first school that I went to was a very kind of straightforward, academically competitive environment. And I think that if I went to a different kind of school, like if I went to a Montessori school or a school like I ended up going to for high school or a Waldorf school, I would maybe not have been diagnosed or noticed. I think. Cause it wasn't so bad, but it was bad enough to deeply be unable to keep up academically with the fast paced kind of traditional education that I was getting as a young girl. Same place I did Jenny in the school for cats. And so that kind of affected my path. But it did take them until, like, I was in the third grade to figure out I was dyslexic. Because I was such a good memorizer. I would, like, come in with my.
- [08:04]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, get away with a lot.
- [08:05]
Maya Hawke
You can get away with a lot that way. And you were good at reading your lines? Yeah, I mean, just sort of. They kept bumping me into lower and lower and lower and lower reading groups until they were like, you should probably leave. And I was like, okay, yeah.
- [08:19]
Rachel Martin
Okay, next question. One, two or three?
- [08:21]
Maya Hawke
Okay, I get a sense for one this time. No, no, two. Two, two, two. Sorry. I love.
- [08:26]
Rachel Martin
I love an audible in the moment. It's so interesting to me. It's like we could have gone here. We're not. We're not going here. We're going here.
- [08:33]
Maya Hawke
This is essentially how I do tarot card readings. I have no idea how to read tarot cards, but I'll just draw like a couple cards at random from the deck and then I'll put my hand over them and try to feel which one calls to me and pick that one up. And that's how I give myself a tarot card reading.
- [08:46]
Rachel Martin
I want everyone to play this game. I want there to be like some kind of vibe you're picking up. And this, this is the card you were vibing on. So what's something your parents taught you to love?
- [08:57]
Maya Hawke
Oh, well, I mean, we almost. That sort of fits so beautifully in with what we were just talking about, because the arts is definitely one of them. But I'm trying to think that one's so obvious. I'm trying to think of something else more kind of odd or surprising. You know, my mother really taught me to love and respect nature and to love gardening and being in nature and to love thinking about, like herbal remedies to things. Really? Yeah. And like, just like, you know, you get a cold and she would make me a pineapple skin tea because the pineapple. The enzymes in the pineapple skin are good for getting rid of your cold. And it's stuff like that that's just sort of like witch adjacent, you know, like slightly like not, you know, we're not bubbling over it.
- [09:52]
Rachel Martin
We're not witch.
- [09:53]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, it's not, you know, toil and trouble, but it's that it's Wiccan. Wiccanry, you know, some light. Something that could potentially get you burned at the stake. But that really is just like Wiccanry.
- [10:05]
Rachel Martin
I like living right there, right before the burn.
- [10:07]
Maya Hawke
Right there at the edge. Yeah. Right before you start making a call to Satan.
- [10:13]
Rachel Martin
So how did the love of. I mean, you did grow up in Manhattan, so we're talking, like, about. Oh, okay.
- [10:19]
Maya Hawke
No, I was between Manhattan and upstate New York, and my mom is extremely, like, nature focused, and she's a gorgeous gardener. Even a part of not knowing what my parents deal was professionally was because most of the time I spent with my mother, she was barefoot in our garden on her knees, like, picking stinging nettles to make soups out of. And so I really. Which is also another incredible herbal remedy for what ails you.
- [10:47]
Rachel Martin
I was just gonna ask, is stinging nettles soup good?
- [10:50]
Maya Hawke
It's amazing, really. It's my favorite soup. And it's so hard to get stinging nettles. And you can only get them, like, really this time of year. And the only place in the city that they sell them is Union Square Farmer's Market. They're, like, at no grocery stores, so they're amazing. And so good for you.
- [11:08]
Rachel Martin
So good for you. Okay. Stinging nettle soup. That's.
- [11:11]
Maya Hawke
You have to blanch them first to get rid of the stinging.
- [11:13]
Rachel Martin
Obviously, Myra. Obviously you have to blanch them. Yes,
- [11:18]
Maya Hawke
but. So witchiness, like a kind of witchy love of nature and a love of herbal remedies and kind of different sorts of medicines for what ails you.
- [11:28]
Rachel Martin
Is your dad magic?
- [11:30]
Maya Hawke
I mean, he's magic in a different way. He's a magical thinker.
- [11:39]
Rachel Martin
I see that. I see that.
- [11:40]
Maya Hawke
I wouldn't say he's witchy, but he is, like, you know, he used to do, like, treasure hunts and scavenger hunts for me as a kid. And, like, where he'd write little notes and, like, paint a map on a watercolor and cut it up. So he's, like, crafty and magical, but he's not witchy.
- [11:58]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, yeah, I know. You know. Okay, next one. One. Two or three?
- [12:04]
Maya Hawke
Three.
- [12:04]
Rachel Martin
Three. What's something you took away from your first job? What was your first job?
- [12:10]
Maya Hawke
Oh, interesting. Well, my very, very first job was babysitting.
- [12:15]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [12:16]
Maya Hawke
And I took away from that. That I wasn't gonna do a lot of babysitting.
- [12:22]
Rachel Martin
It wasn't your life's calling. No.
- [12:24]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. That I didn't want to.
- [12:25]
Rachel Martin
We should exempt babysitting as a first job, but, yes, we should.
- [12:28]
Maya Hawke
We should. And then my real first job was Little women for the BBC. But, yeah, I turned 19 doing Little Women, and I really learned a lot about friendship. I'd never had a group of friends, really. I'd had different kind of individual friendships, and I vacationed in some people's groups of friends. But the bonding element that happened between the sisters and Laurie was so intense. It was unlike any friend group experience of my life. And I really. I a learned that I'm kind of not a friend group person, even though that experience was amazing. I'm really an individual friendships person, and I love it when, like, everyone becomes friends. But the group dynamics are intense for me, and I was kind of whisked away into them. But I was so lucky to be with the most wonderful people I'd ever met and the most wonderful actors, and we had such a profound time together. And so I just. I think I learned that I was. That I'd made good decisions, that I wanted to be an actor, that I was exactly where I belonged. And I learned about friend groups and love and kind of sisterhood in a way that I hadn't known about it before, which is also. I'm now reminded that I also modeled before I ever did that, which was a job. And I learned that being a model is really hard that I thought it was. I learned about just how much harder that job was than I thought it was. On your. Really. On my spirit at the time.
- [14:06]
Rachel Martin
Oh, on your spirit.
- [14:07]
Maya Hawke
Both. No. Kind of physically hard, too. Like, long hours, crazy days. But on my spirit, it was hard because at the, like, none of the clothes fit me. They were all too small on my first modeling job. And then it was. And they'd only brought clothes that were too small.
- [14:21]
Rachel Martin
I'm so glad you said the clothes were too small and not. I was too big for the clothes.
- [14:25]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, they were too small.
- [14:27]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, they were too small for you.
- [14:28]
Maya Hawke
They were too small. I was the only person doing this campaign, and the clothes didn't fit me. And it wasn't like people were like, oh, my God, we're so sorry the clothes didn't fit you. They were like, how do we get you into these clothes?
- [14:41]
Rachel Martin
So they were like, you are too big, and these clothes are the perfect size.
- [14:44]
Maya Hawke
You are too big.
- [14:45]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [14:45]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. They were like, you were too big, and these clothes are the perfect size, and what are we going to do about it? And it was sort of like, I don't know. So that was also. And I've now told you about, like, nine jobs to answer your question that all in one way or another are and are not my first job, but I learned a lot.
- [14:59]
Rachel Martin
As expected, you are knocking it out of the park here.
- [15:02]
Maya Hawke
I'm very verbose. I'm very verbose. You can choose. You can pick and choose whatever answers you like.
- [15:16]
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- [16:04]
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- [16:40]
Rachel Martin
Okay, we're going to pull back from the game for a few minutes to talk about your new album. Maitreya Corso, this is your fourth studio album. Congratulations.
- [16:48]
Maya Hawke
Thank you.
- [16:49]
Rachel Martin
It's a very big deal.
- [16:50]
Maya Hawke
It's a lot of you.
- [16:51]
Rachel Martin
I mean, some of the point of bringing up Stranger Things, obviously you're in the cultural firmament in such a big way through that role, but you're also it's an ensemble cast. It's the Duffer Brothers production. It came out of their brain. And for you, I imagine, music gets to be this thing that is just yours.
- [17:12]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, I mean, I think that my thing with music is that I can't stop. I just can't stop myself from wrestling with ideas and emotions and feelings. And this is the way that I have learned and that I learned as a kid really, to kind of, you know, when you have an epiphany of sorts and you want to log it, you want to be like, oh, okay, I want to try to track this. It's sort of like my diary, where I'm like, okay, I came to say you write it in just changed. Yeah. And it's like, okay, I just changed. I just leveled up. I just grew. I just learned something I didn't know. And I want to find the right words to express that lesson I learned and then kind of freeze it in this locked case.
- [18:00]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [18:01]
Maya Hawke
And that's my songwriting process, and I just kind of can't stop doing it. And so that's why we're onto album four. But then weirdly putting it out, it's, like, so scary because it's both this private you thing, this logbook you've made, and then you're watching it. I think of releases almost more as funerals than birthdays, because it's not yours anymore. It's now gonna become its whole own thing. That's right. You probably weigh in on it, and
- [18:37]
Rachel Martin
they're gonna take pieces away, and it might not be the pieces you thought they would take away, and then it becomes something else to other people.
- [18:43]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. And I think years later, you can look at what it was to other people and really see what they saw. And I think that that is a beautiful process. Like, I love. I have so much love for my first album now, and I didn't for years after it, but I now look back on it, and I'm like, oh, wow. I can now look at this and see what other people saw when they listened to it. And I can feel what that moment in my life was and have so much love for that person that I was. But right away, it just feels like this profound moment of misunderstanding. Like, you took your clothes off in the lunchroom, and everyone's looking at you, and they see something totally different than who you are.
- [19:27]
Rachel Martin
Yeah. God.
- [19:29]
Maya Hawke
And so the release process is always hard.
- [19:31]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
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Maya Hawke
But, yeah.
- [19:34]
Rachel Martin
So introduce us to Maitreya Corso.
- [19:38]
Maya Hawke
Well, I would say the record's about two things. It's about learning how to be a public person, learning how to manage workaholism, and how to protect one's private life from that. How to care about your private life. How to put energy into that while still being so ambitious and wanting so much for yourself and wanting to do work you love and, you know, wanting to work with people you admire and how to kind of balance those two things. And I think it's about falling in love. And with. In a really deep way. I think not. I think a lot of the time, when people talk about falling in love. They're talking about kind of limerence and lust. And I hope that what this record explores is a kind of deeper romantic friendship, or at least the aspiration to move towards that.
- [20:40]
Rachel Martin
You made it with your husband, Christian Lee Hudson. Where do we hear his imprint on these songs? Can you point to a song where you're like, oh, there he is?
- [20:51]
Maya Hawke
Oh, totally. I mean, there's one song called Slacker in the Rye. Because I wrote this chorus that was like, I haven't done much with a lot I've been given Treat you like a crutch and a lover and a living. And, you know, it came to me with the words and the music, and I showed it to Christian. He was like, that's awesome. I love that. And I spent a long time trying to write verses to it and eventually sort of hit a wall. And we were on a road trip, and he just started, like. He writes amazingly when he drives. And he just started going, like, pacing outside in my new clothes, Kicking ball tires with my steel toes. And I was like, oh, that's it. Those are the words for. Those are the words for. Haven't done much, you know, Chorus. And then we spent that whole drive just passing back and forth, working on these lyrics. And, like, he'd be like, okay. He'd be like, I have a lyric from years ago that was. Remember that night back in Salt Lake? A couple hundred screenagers rest on the stage. And I was like, oh, amazing. I like, okay, what if the next part was I thought I felt like something in a hedge maze? And he was like, no, a rat in a lab maze. And I was like, oh, okay.
- [22:15]
Rachel Martin
He goes.
- [22:16]
Maya Hawke
And then I'm like, all I ever cared about was keeping you safe. And he's like, yes, that's great. And so we really, like, you feel his imprint. And he wrote that music to the chorus. So, like, that's a great song of just, like, describing how we wrote together and where his imprint is. It's lyrical, it's musical. But his biggest imprint is. Or to me, I mean, I don't know if it's fair to say his biggest imprint. But a really important imprint he had was the imprint he has had on my confidence in myself as a musician. I just got off tour where I played guitar on stage for the first time, and he owes all the credit for that, for making me believe that I could. I really did not believe that I could. And I did not believe it was important that I did. And I wanted to, but I was like, you're you and Will and Ben and all these people we work with all the time are so much better guitar players than me. Why should I play? He's like, because it's your song, and you wrote your song. And you're gonna feel so proud standing up there and playing. And he was totally right. And he helped me practice and learn. And he, you know, just started encouraging me when we were making the record. Like, I would be walking down the rooms of our house, folding laundry, singing a melody, and he'd be like, that's a good melody. Remember it, record it. And I'd be like, no, I'm not a melody writer. You are. And he really taught me to believe in myself as a melody writer.
- [23:34]
Rachel Martin
What a wonderful person. Because you can live a whole lifetime being like, I'm not good enough to do that. There are experts who do that. That's not my thing. I can't. And it sounds like he's just like, erase all that.
- [23:46]
Maya Hawke
Erase all that.
- [23:47]
Rachel Martin
Erase all of it. You do what makes you happy. You get to make art. You get to play guitar and write songs.
- [23:54]
Maya Hawke
And the classic thing of, like, the point of it, the point of art is to try to get your. You, Ness on the page, right? Like, your uniqueness. And he's like, all of those things that you see as your limitations are what make you you. And your strengths are a part of what make you you. And your strength is your ability to like, to be that bravely. And everyone wants. That's what's inspiring, is to watch somebody be themselves.
- [24:22]
Rachel Martin
That's right. That's right. Well, sounds like you picked a good one, Maya.
- [24:30]
Maya Hawke
Thanks. I'm feeling pretty good about it.
- [24:37]
Rachel Martin
Okay, round two. We're back in it. One, two or three?
- [24:41]
Maya Hawke
One.
- [24:43]
Rachel Martin
How comfortable are you with change?
- [24:50]
Maya Hawke
Heavily comfortable with change. Really uncomfortable with transitions.
- [25:00]
Rachel Martin
Differentiate those. For me, you're fine once you get through the transition, but you don't like the anticipation of the change.
- [25:07]
Maya Hawke
Yes.
- [25:08]
Rachel Martin
Oh, my God. That's so. I am the opposite. Really put me on this side of the mountain, like, when I can anticipate this is gonna happen. I love right here. I love being on the cusp of something. It's my favorite thing to be in anticipation of change.
- [25:28]
Maya Hawke
The change.
- [25:29]
Rachel Martin
I don't think it's healthy, to be perfectly honest. I think it's a little mental. But I'm very interested in a person who intentionally doesn't like the transition.
- [25:40]
Maya Hawke
Well, I think that, like, for me, I think it comes from going back and forth between my parents. House when I was a kid, and the hardest days of that were the day where the transition happened.
- [25:57]
Rachel Martin
Totally. The packing. Aren't you bringing a little backpack?
- [26:03]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, the packing. And also just the spiritual shift in rules and expectations and energy and values. And I think getting ready to move through that shift was really hard for me as a kid. And I think now I feel it come up whenever shifts happen. Like, transition days, like, we talk about them in our house with, like a. Hey, why are you being weird? Oh, it's. Cause it's a transition day. Got it. Like, it's a day we have to go to the airport. A day one person has to go to the airport and the other one doesn't. Like, I would say, like, one of the most common fights we get in is like, I sometimes get where I'm like, if you're gonna leave, leave. You know, that's like, can we just get to the other side of the.
- [26:46]
Rachel Martin
Leave.
- [26:47]
Maya Hawke
Can we just get to the other side? Like, I'm terrible at goodbye. Like, I'm terrible at goodbyes and doing all that. So I really struggle with that. What you said, I relate to. There are things with, like, big life changes, like moving or, you know, all these things where when I'm thinking about doing them, I'm so excited. When I'm doing them, it's horrible.
- [27:08]
Rachel Martin
Right.
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Maya Hawke
And then when I'm on the other side of it, I'm so happy that I did it.
- [27:11]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
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Maya Hawke
So I don't know. Like, there's. I understand what you're saying, and I don't think it sounds crazy.
- [27:15]
Rachel Martin
Thank you for affirming me. I've often thought that, but it gets a little dangerous when I. It's like a high I get from the anticipation of the change.
- [27:28]
Maya Hawke
I get, like, this too. I get this, too.
- [27:29]
Rachel Martin
As you grow up, you need to stop changing some things. You just need to settle and live your life, and you make certain commitments, and you have to be an adult.
- [27:39]
Maya Hawke
But I'm always like, oh, what's a thing that could change?
- [27:43]
Rachel Martin
And now I'm gonna sit and think about it and all the possibility that exists around it.
- [27:48]
Maya Hawke
And. Yeah, I mean, my entire notebook, it's a creative space. It's generative. My notebooks are full of plans for homes I'll never live in.
- [27:56]
Rachel Martin
That's right.
- [27:57]
Maya Hawke
And like. And ideas about. Like. I'm constantly talking about moving to Sweden. And, like, I'm totally not.
- [28:06]
Rachel Martin
Sweden is lovely.
- [28:08]
Maya Hawke
Sweden's amazing. Yes. I support that, too. I hear this. Sweden, like, if you called and said we would like you back, our daughter of our Lands I would return. But I'm one quarter Swedish. And I milk it. Yes, I milk it. I make Swedish pancakes and Swedish meatballs, and I do Swedish.
- [28:27]
Rachel Martin
My brewery design is my people's food.
- [28:30]
Maya Hawke
Yeah, this is my people's food. I mean, my grandmother is very Swedish, and she kind of set the tone for our traditions. And, like, we do Christmas at night, and we do, like. So I milk it. But I did also grow up with a large influence of the culture on the kind of matriarchy of my family.
- [28:50]
Rachel Martin
Yeah. Okay, next three in this round. Insights. One, two or three?
- [28:56]
Maya Hawke
One again.
- [28:57]
Rachel Martin
One again. What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?
- [29:03]
Maya Hawke
It's a big. I have a big. I needed to unlearn believing that I wasn't physically strong. I really used to believe that I. That, like, you know, my relationship to my body was all about how. What it looked like, not what it could do. I hated sports. I hated, like, I hated all. And I really had to unlearn that I was bad at that and free myself up to be willing to, like, play physically and be in touch with my body and believe that my body was more about what it could do than what it looked like.
- [29:38]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [29:39]
Maya Hawke
And so that was a big one for me.
- [29:41]
Rachel Martin
That's a big, big one.
- [29:43]
Maya Hawke
And a really big one. That sounds silly, but was. I needed to unlearn that I was crazy, which I say more like I was a precocious young person. I wanted to be an adult. And I did a lot of adult stuff before a lot of my friends and was in adult relationships before a lot of my friends were. And messing up in adult relationships and making babes. What do you mean?
- [30:13]
Rachel Martin
Like, friendships with grownups or romantic relationships with grownups?
- [30:16]
Maya Hawke
No, I mean romantic relationships with adults.
- [30:19]
Rachel Martin
Oh.
- [30:20]
Maya Hawke
Like, I mean. I mean, you were young and you
- [30:21]
Rachel Martin
had romantic relationships with people who were older.
- [30:24]
Maya Hawke
Older than me. Yeah. And then. But then also. But also with my friends. Like, that also made me seem older. Cause I was in this adult relationship, and then I would. So I really had kind of an idea about myself that I was like, I'm crazy Maya. Crazy Maya is always going through a hard breakup or has a new big crush and is madly obsessed with this person or wants to make a big change and move and wants to. Like, I had this kind of idea that I was crazy because I was spending a lot of time with people older than me and behaving like a young person and who was figuring things out and making mistakes and learning a lot. And that made Me kind of seem, like, wild and older to my younger friends. And I had a lot of older people being like, you need to grow up. Like, you know, and it's always funny. It's like when you're an older person dating a younger person telling them to grow up. Like, one of those two people needs to grow up. And it's probably not the younger person. That's right. You know, But.
- [31:27]
Rachel Martin
But you were almost amplified. Like, life was amplified for you in a way.
- [31:31]
Maya Hawke
Life was amplified. And I was devouring it. Like, I was just, like, devouring it. And it made me. I felt myself making excuses to people all the time for the way that I was acting and just being, like, kind of starting to embrace the. Like, I know I'm crazy, but. And it took me a little while to be like, actually, I'm not crazy at all. I was 22, in an unusual set of circuit, and 21 and 23. It was, like, kind of my. From like, eight. I felt this way a lot from like, 17, when I started thinking about working and moving out of the house to kind of, like, 24 was this period of time in my life, and I had to realize, you were not crazy. You were young and with adult freedom and adult responsibility, and you have now matured, and you were never crazy. No.
- [32:29]
Rachel Martin
You were just trying to find your
- [32:30]
Maya Hawke
way, Just figuring it out and trying stuff. And I'm so proud of all the things I tried and learned about and so happy, because I'm. I love all the information that I gained and all the wisdom I have with which to maneuver my life right now. And I love my life right now. And it's, like, not crazy at all. It's, like, pretty ordinary. And I. And I was. Anyway, so I had to unlearn that.
- [32:57]
Rachel Martin
Wow, Maya. A lot. I mean, what comes from those kinds of experiences, that amplification that you were devouring? Some wisdom. You've learned some things in a very short period of time.
- [33:11]
Maya Hawke
Thank you.
- [33:11]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [33:12]
Maya Hawke
I appreciate that a lot.
- [33:13]
Rachel Martin
Yeah. Last one in this round. One, Two or three?
- [33:16]
Maya Hawke
Okay, three.
- [33:20]
Rachel Martin
What's something you still feel you have to prove to people you meet? Ooh.
- [33:27]
Maya Hawke
Um. Really interesting. I think the biggest thing is my weird chip that I've been working on learning to let go. Is it the easiest way to hurt my feelings is if you say that I don't work hard or that I don't like. That is my soft spot. And I think sometimes I work myself into a tizzy because I'm so afraid that someone is gonna say that I don't work hard.
- [33:57]
Rachel Martin
Where does that come from? The fear about someone judging your work ethic? Did it happen once or.
- [34:05]
Maya Hawke
It probably comes from my dad. My dad works really hard and he's really busy. And he puts his relationship to his work is, like, so the primary relationship in his life. And he puts so much into it. And I think that I really wanted for a long time to show him that I work, that I can work as hard as he does and put as much into it as he does. And I think I really had some wanting to deep. Like, he's always been proud of me. He would make fun of me talking like this, but I so deeply wanted him to be proud of me. And I felt like the best way to gain his pride was to be, like, exhausted in the arts, you know, like to be taking on. To be biting off the whole apple.
- [35:11]
Rachel Martin
And I can imagine that in the arts in particular, you still. It's like you feel it is a privilege. It is a beautiful privilege to get to make art and to make a living doing it.
- [35:23]
Maya Hawke
It's a huge Privilege.
- [35:24]
Rachel Martin
Based the. Whatever 40 minutes I've known you, I can already tell that you would know that so intrinsically that it is a privilege to get to do it. And the way you deal with that is be like, I am not gonna take one day for granted.
- [35:38]
Maya Hawke
Moment of this for granted.
- [35:39]
Rachel Martin
That's right. I'm gonna prove to people that I deserve my place here, and I'm just gonna work my butt off.
- [35:44]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. And it was when I started kind of trying to untangle that, though I still totally have it. It's the number one way to hurt my feelings. But I said yes to doing a movie in Atlanta as, like, second on the call sheet. So, like, a big leading role at the same time as I was shooting season four of Stranger Things, and I was doing days on one movie and nights on the other. What for? Yeah, for, like, that was one week of days and nights, but I was doing both. And I didn't have one day off for two months. That is crazy.
- [36:17]
Rachel Martin
When did sleeping happen?
- [36:20]
Maya Hawke
I bought a giant beanbag, and I brought it with me everywhere. It was a really light beanbag. I weighed five. It was called a moon pod, and I bought a moon pod, and I brought the moon pod with me everywhere I went. So you just catches.
- [36:33]
Rachel Martin
Catch can.
- [36:34]
Maya Hawke
And I just. It was wolf. It was wolf naps. I was doing wolf naps. And it was in that period of time where the pride I had in what I was doing, the, like, I'd kind of never felt better about myself. I was so cocky. Like, I'm amazing because I'm not taking care of myself. And it was in that that I started to unwind this pathology. But it's still like, and I will Everyone who loves me in my life, when I say I'm saying yes to something, they're like, and what else are you doing? At the same time, you know, Are you sure you can handle that?
- [37:10]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, right?
- [37:13]
Maya Hawke
Foreign.
- [37:20]
Advertisement/Announcer
This message comes from Schwab Self Directed Investing, Trading Full Service Wealth Management Automated Investing, Financial Planning, Thematic Investing, Retirement Planning and to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life, stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
- [37:51]
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- [38:44]
Rachel Martin
Last round beliefs 12 or 3?
- [38:49]
Maya Hawke
1. 12 psych 2.
- [38:58]
Rachel Martin
Are you preoccupied with the past, the future, or neither?
- [39:03]
Maya Hawke
Oh well, why isn't both an option?
- [39:07]
Rachel Martin
It can't be.
- [39:09]
Maya Hawke
I think I'm more preoccupied with the future these days. I think I used to be way more preoccupied by the past. I still am a little bit. There are some like, riddles of my life that I find myself of when I was not an adult, when I was a kid that I find myself continually trying to solve and unpack. And I'm preoccupied by that. But more and more I'm less and less preoccupied by that and more. Constantly thinking about what I want the future to look like. How am I gonna move to Sweden? Do I think the Swedish embassy will accept me? Why didn't my mom get her Swedish passport? But I think that it's the future that is really kind of winding me up These days. And to the point to which I recently went to a party of some friends of mine from high school, and I just saw all these people that I hadn't seen in ages. And I got all of these memories just redownloaded into my brain that I hadn't thought about in so long. Some were positive, some were negative, but they all felt positive to me. And I was just excited to be having them. And that felt like a moment where I was like, oh, personal growth has occurred. These things are not upsetting to me anymore. They're like, I haven't thought about them in two years, and it's so fun to think about them again. So I think these days, more the future. But that's kind of very new.
- [40:43]
Rachel Martin
And is it to the point where it's debilitating in any way or you're
- [40:50]
Maya Hawke
able to kind of. I think my husband and I balance each other out well. He does a good job of being like, okay, but what about today? Like, what are we gonna do today? What about this moment? What about this time? And I think that that energy helps me a lot. I think that if I didn't have somebody like that in my life, it could become debilitating. But not necessarily because of anxiety about the future. I have more anxiety about, like, I didn't call that person back. What's going on with that person? Is that person mad at me? What's the. That's where my anxiety lives. The future holds possibility and imagination. And I think that the way in which it would become debilitating, it would be about the preoccupation with imagining a beautiful day in the future that therefore does not allow you to enjoy the beautiful day you are in.
- [41:45]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, yeah, I hear that. I mean, did you have to demonstrate that you were a person who understood anxiety before you were cast as anxiety in Inside out too?
- [41:56]
Maya Hawke
Well, I cried during my audition, so I think maybe I just naturally demonstrated that I was. Because they told me the story, you know, that you couldn't read the script or anything before you came and auditioned, obviously. So they told me the story, and just in hearing the story of that movie, I left.
- [42:14]
Rachel Martin
It's the most beautiful movie. It's the most beautiful movie.
- [42:16]
Maya Hawke
It's the most beautiful movie. I just love it. I love it so much. I'm so proud to have been anywhere near it. And I really do struggle with anxiety, I think I. Not in the way that I think because I played Robin, who's very chatty and high energy. But what if this. And Da, da, da. And then Because I played anxiety, who also has that kind of energy. That's not the volume of my anxiety. And sometimes I tell people, like, I don't have anxiety because it's not that kind.
- [42:51]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, it doesn't show up that way.
- [42:54]
Maya Hawke
It's more like a hippopotamus sitting on my chest. Like, it's more like the feeling of like, this is gonna go really bad. I just can't stop thinking about this thing. But it's like, lower and slow and cold. Whatever. My anxiety animated character that lives in my br. It's like blue, and it's linked with sadness. And my sadness and my anxiety and my anger are all holding hands on the couch. And my anxiety is blue and my anger is very small. And my sadness is kind of happy.
- [43:31]
Rachel Martin
Oh, interesting.
- [43:32]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. My sadness might be, like, pink. And that's the. I don't know. That's kind of the landscape.
- [43:40]
Rachel Martin
Because you're compensating. Do you think your sadness tries to compensate for being sad by showing up as pink?
- [43:46]
Maya Hawke
I think my anxiety. I think my anxiety or my sadness. I have ease with my dynamic with sadness. We have good communication. And I'm not afraid of sadness. I have some control stuff, and sadness doesn't interact with control. Sadness is like, we are sad this happened. There is nothing we can do to change it. How sad. I can hold that space, that sadness. The anxiety comes in because it's a sadness and an anger about something that I think I could change if I was smart enough. And I hate myself for not being able to fix it. Wow.
- [44:40]
Rachel Martin
Oh, those are all the toxic ingredients. Little self loathing in there.
- [44:47]
Maya Hawke
Mm. Yeah. Yum.
- [44:49]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Maya Hawke
All right. Yeah.
- [44:52]
Rachel Martin
That was a good one.
- [44:54]
Maya Hawke
Thank you.
- [44:55]
Rachel Martin
Not that you need me to affirm your answers, but that really was.
- [44:57]
Maya Hawke
I do. I like answers. I love affirmation also. I'm desperate for attention. I'm an artist. Do you know that Bo Burnham has that song he's like about? It's called the Artist. I think he wants it buried because you would only find it on YouTube. Entertainers. Entertainers like to seem complicated, but they're not complicated. They're just. Have you ever been to a birthday party with toddlers? I don't know. It's like just that they're about entertainers or attention whores. I highly recommend listening to it. It's excellent. One, two, or three. Okay, one. I mean, at this time.
- [45:30]
Rachel Martin
You do. Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined?
- [45:37]
Maya Hawke
Um, there are moments. I don't necessarily technically believe this, but the Way I maneuver life and experience life communicates this information to me, which is like, we all have many different paths, like, in front of us that we could go in, right? It's like, this is maybe a combination of free will and predestination is like, every spirit has rooms full of doors that they walk into, and behind every door is a hallway full of doors. And if you like, it would be like the fractal system of paths available to each individual. And I feel. I can feel when I'm on the golden one, like, it's not the only thing that could have happened, and it's not. And it didn't have to happen, and it wasn't guaranteed. I had to make strategic decisions to choose that door. And it wasn't always the door that was calling to me at the moment or the sexiest door or, you know, whatever, but that I can feel it when I'm like, nope, Even though this is hard, this is the golden path. This is the golden fractal sequence. This is where I'm supposed to be in the version of myself that I most want to be. This is maybe ridiculous to say, but sometimes I feel like there are. There's, like, this really lonely, grumpy workaholic in my brain that is a character that I could have been. And she's fabulous. I have so much love for her. She, like, she thinks so much. She just works all the time, and she makes as much money as possible, and she's totally alone and by herself, and she's in control of everything in her life. And she sits in her apartment at night in total silence while she looks out the window at the ocean crashing on the beach. Cause of course she lives at the beach. Cause why wouldn't she? She can. And that's a path that I feel like I could have walked down, you know? And there are other ones that are less entertaining to describe. And I feel I can see the options that my spirit could have walked through in life. And I can feel when I'm choosing not necessarily, like, not necessarily the most fun or the one I like the darkest or whatever, but the path that I most want to be on. And there are moments where I feel that happen. And, like, one of them was when my husband and I decided to get a place in upstate New York. And we toured this house, and we were like, we live here, like, and this is the right path for us. We need to spend more time in nature. We need to be here. We need to be in this house together. And we felt it like. Like, Lock in. And it was in our price range, and it was like, yes. And that's like a moment where I've been like, yes. Okay, this is where we need to be.
- [48:29]
Rachel Martin
You have a strong intuition, and that is a gift. Last question. One, two, or three.
- [48:36]
Maya Hawke
Can I say. You choose?
- [48:38]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, you can say that. Little. Dealer's choice.
- [48:41]
Maya Hawke
Okay, you choose.
- [48:41]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [48:42]
Maya Hawke
Dealer's choice. It's a new rule.
- [48:46]
Rachel Martin
They're all so good. I'm asking this one. You know why? Because I've never asked it of anyone.
- [48:53]
Maya Hawke
Amazing.
- [48:53]
Rachel Martin
And it feels kind of silly, but it's not. It can go to interesting places. So here we go. Maya Hawke.
- [48:58]
Maya Hawke
Yeah.
- [48:58]
Rachel Martin
Do you believe in ghosts?
- [49:01]
Maya Hawke
Oh, wow. Amazing. I really thought that you were about to say God and I was gonna go skip. Ah, it didn't say that. I know.
- [49:09]
Rachel Martin
Do you believe in spirits?
- [49:13]
Maya Hawke
I. I don't believe in. I don't believe in dead people retaining agency over their consciousness in a consistent way where they are able to haunt.
- [49:30]
Rachel Martin
You so much for taking this intellectually seriously, this question. Thank you. Okay, keep going.
- [49:34]
Maya Hawke
I don't believe in hauntings. I do believe in magic very distinctly. And I once had an experience that I felt was a magical experience connected to someone who had passed, but it wasn't ghosty. It was like talking about someone and then the moon reflected against the curtains in a very specific way. That was the way that they used to talk about the moon. And it felt like, oh, hi. And.
- [50:08]
Rachel Martin
But I think we can use. I think we can define ghosts.
- [50:11]
Maya Hawke
I will.
- [50:11]
Rachel Martin
Anyway, very broadly, I think it's presence, it's energy. It's moonlight on a curtain.
- [50:20]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. And I believe that people. I believe that consciousness, that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that whatever. And I believe in the soul. And I believe that there's a you, Ness. That is absolutely you, that has nothing to do with your physical body. And that one day when you will die, you will graduate and that energy will go somewhere. And I don't know where, but I believe in that. And so. And in a way, that's a ghost.
- [50:45]
Rachel Martin
Yeah. That was lovely.
- [50:48]
Maya Hawke
Thank you.
- [50:53]
Rachel Martin
We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the memory time machine, Maya, you revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose?
- [51:13]
Maya Hawke
Wow. It's so funny.
- [51:15]
Rachel Martin
It's funny to say that, right? Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:22]
Maya Hawke
Oh, God. It really is such a reflection on like, the more work I need to do in therapy because, like, some part of me is, like, I would go back and because I was so young when my parents split up, I would go back and feel that again.
- [51:41]
Rachel Martin
Feel the togetherness again.
- [51:42]
Maya Hawke
Yeah. And, like. Cause I barely remember, and I would go back to clarify the memory or something. But I'm trying to graduate from that parent trap level of therapy, which I do believe is level one. And I've been in therapy for, like, eight years. So in my effort to try to graduate into level two of therapy, I would say that I would really want to go back to a moment on Little Women that we just. To even go back in our conversation. I. I would go back and feel I had this night we were at the Royal Marine Hotel in Dunleary, Ireland, and they had a pool in the basement that was so beautiful. It was like 1980s glamour. It hadn't been refurbished in a really long time, but when it was built, it was the best they could do. You know what I mean? And I was down there in the water with now one of my best friends in the whole world, Willa Fitzgerald, who's an amazing actress. And we were having an argument about acting. And I was. She's a little older than me, and I was fresh out of drama school. And I was so pretentious. I was so pretentious and so moralistic and so sure about everything I was saying. And so my belief in the craft and in myself and my ability to do it was so intense. And I would love to go back and feel that feeling again. I would love for a second of a reminder of the belief in myself I had at 19 and try to have to try to bottle it and bring a little bit of it back to me at 27, 28. Because that belief got me to where I am now. And I'm gonna need some to get me where I want to go. And so I want to remember that feeling.
- [53:48]
Rachel Martin
Maya Hawk, you can hear her on her new album. It is called My Trea Corso. Maya Hawk, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this.
- [53:59]
Maya Hawke
Thank you so much. I love talking to you and I love your cards and thank you, thank you, thank you. And I didn't skip.
- [54:05]
Rachel Martin
You didn't skip? A plus.
- [54:07]
Maya Hawke
I didn't skip. I took them all. A took them all.
- [54:09]
Rachel Martin
I knew it. I knew it. Thanks so much for listening. If you like this conversation, I would recommend going back and watching my interview with Jeanette McCurdy. Jeanette just has this enthusiasm for writing and reinventing herself that I think matches Maya Hawke's energy in a lot of ways.
- [54:29]
Maya Hawke
Check it out.
- [54:30]
Rachel Martin
This episode was produced by Alicia Zhang and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni and our theme music is by Ramtin Arablouei. You can reach out to us@wildcardnpr.org we're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.
- [54:51]
Advertisement/Announcer
This message comes from Schwab. Self Directed Investing, Trading, Full Service Wealth Management, Automated Investing, Financial Planning, Thematic Investing, Retirement Planning. And to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life, stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
- [55:24]
Maya Hawke
Before the day gets busy, make sure you get connected. The Connector is your daily podcast for answering the question, what's happening in Idaho? Make it part of your morning routine. That's the Connector Idaho Daily News from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.
- [55:43]
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