It’s early morning in Atlanta, Georgia when Hot Press puts in a Zoom call to Maya Hawke. She’s currently in the midst of shooting perhaps the most hotly anticipated TV series in the world right now, the fifth and final season of Netflix’s smash sci-fi thriller, Stranger Things, which is due to arrive in 2025.

The 26-year-old star has also just released her third album, Chaos Angel, a beguiling collection of folk-pop, which wonderfully showcases her melodic flair and mordantly witty lyrics. Having let her dog, Lucky, outside for a run, Hawke settles down for our chat. With this being her third record, I wonder if she feels she’s starting to properly get the hang of songwriting?

“Yeah, I do,” says the singer, still a little croaky-voiced from the early hour. “More than that, I’d say I’m getting the hang of my songwriting. I’m getting to know my own style better, and the ingredients that make a song of mine feel finished. It’s one thing to understand how to write a song broadly, but it’s another to write something that’s stylistically coherent.”

Did you always want to combine music and acting?

“I always did both,” says Hawke. “I don’t even know if I’m combining them at this point! They’re pretty separate, although I am doing both. I don’t know, in the world of the arts, I’ve always thought that there’s one source, one flame. All the different disciplines – whether it be painting, acting, singing or what have you – are places you can carry a twig from that flame to start a new fire. You can plug a different lamp into the same outlet. I’ve always seen them all as coming from the same source.”

With Hawke’s music having such a distinctive folk influence – she’s a huge Leonard Cohen fan – was she drawn more to that style growing up, as opposed to contemporary pop?

“I think I was drawn to all of it in different ways, at different times,” considers Maya, as Lucky barks outside in the background. “I kind of made a discovery that there were some people who were making songs who were also poets. I remember I found a book of Leonard Cohen’s poetry, and I was like, ‘Wait, he’s a poet?!’ Then you get an understanding that Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell are poets too. Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes as well.

“I started to see there were some people using music as a place to express and give context to poetry. Those people became very interesting and important to me, because I found that was what I cared most about in music. I feel like I’ve been in a transition from always seeing myself as a poet in a band, where I’d go, ‘I think music is the best way to put forward this poem.’”

Maya recalls how a formative experience helped shape her in this regard.

“In my school, there was an event called jazz poetry,” she reflects. “The jazz band and the poetry students would get together, and the poetry students would read their poems while the jazz band improvised. That was kind of how I saw myself for a while; if you listen to my first album, there’s a lot of jazz influences. For a while, I saw myself as a poet in a band – it doesn’t even matter what the music is behind me, it’s just a supportive element to help express the poem.

“In the last couple of years, through the last few albums, I’ve started to see myself as a musician, understanding the inherent value of the music itself, rather than just seeing it as a rocket ship for a poem.”

Nonetheless, Maya remains very drawn to writing lyrics.

“To me, a song with great music and bad lyrics is a bad song,” she opines. “Whereas a song with great lyrics and kind of lame music, is a song that needs some help. It’s an imperfect song. So the lyrics are extremely important to me.”

There are certainly some standout lines on Chaos Angel. On ‘Dark’, for example, Hawke croons, “Tried to let you forget me / But my celtic cross was heavy when it hit your fucking teeth”. Was that drawn from personal experience?

“Well, I have this chain that I haven’t been wearing lately,” the singer explains. “But I wore it almost every day for the last 10 years, and it’s a celtic cross. So yes, it is drawn from personal experience (laughs). It’s been known to chip a tooth!”

I suggest maybe she needs to be more careful swinging it around, to which Maya laughingly responds, “That’s why I don’t wear it!”

Maya Hawke. Photos: Alex Ross Perry and Robert Kolodny

Famously the daughter of Hollywood stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman – her vocal cadences and facial expressions are at times uncannily reminiscent of Ethan’s – Maya was raised in New York and studied acting at the Juilliard School in the city, before dropping out to accept a role in a BBC/PBS co-production of Little Women. One of the most intriguing moments on Chaos Angel comes on ‘Missing Out’, in which she reflects on the trade-off of commencing her career at an early age.

The song was inspired by the experience of socialising with her brother’s college friends, with Hawke releasing they were enjoying a rite-of-passage few years, which she herself chose to forego to pursue acting. In the most memorable line, she sings, “I was born with my foot in the door and my mind in the gutter.”

“What I was trying to do with that song is set it up,” Hawke explains, “so that the first two verses – including that line about the foot in the door – reflect an external perception of who I am. Not my own perception of myself, but the feeling of being talked about. There’s a line that goes, ‘I’m a drunk hanger-on hitting on a younger guy’. That’s not how I felt about myself, that was my perception of how I was being talked about.

“It’s the same with ‘My foot in the door and my mind in the gutter’ – again, it’s about others’ perceptions. So, it’s conveying all these different views people had of me, then flipping it on its head with a line that goes, ‘I’ve been someone to talk about / I want to be someone to talk to’. That’s what I was trying to achieve. But I think it may have been a failed attempt! I’ve had a lot of conversations about the record now, and no one has the impression that a lot of that song is satire. They seem to have the impression that it’s very confessional.

“Maybe I just don’t understand it yet, but in my mind it was satire.”

On the song’s more general theme of missing out on the college experience, Maya notes she’s had an unorthodox path.

“When I was figuring out what to do as a senior in high school,” she reflects, “the big thing people kept saying to me was, ‘College isn’t about what you learn, it’s about your social environment.’ My point of view at the time was, ‘If it’s not about what I learn, then I’m gonna go live life, I think.’ I couldn’t get into a great college, so why would I wanna go and just get drunk for four years? I was going, ‘I want to work and start building my life, come on!’

“But then later, when the time had passed and four years had gone by in a flash, those kids were out of school. They were all best friends, and they’d had this incredible experience and were going on their Euro trips together. They were celebrating. At that point, I was like, ‘Oh, maybe the social part was important. Cos I’ve started a career, and I’m out here doing it, but I don’t have a lot of friends.’ That’s what I was writing about.”

Clearly of sharp intelligence, Maya has a compelling take on her generation’s place in the world, most clearly articulated on the Chaos Angel track ‘Big Idea’, which alludes to beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s classic ‘Howl’.

“The beats were writing and defining their generation,” she notes. “They were trying to understand what their generation’s role in society was. That song is about that a little bit – trying to figure out what our generation’s role is. I mean, it’s a silly song, it’s not that serious, but we do get a lot of mixed messages. Half of the information we get is about how the world is gonna end, and it’s actually impossible to save it. Thirty years ago, they were like, ‘In 30 years, it’ll be impossible to save it!’

“It seems impossible to elect good leaders to help even start thinking about saving it. The world is a disaster, so you have two instincts. First, you go, ‘Okay, we have to destroy everything and rebuild it all from scratch.’ Or there’s the other instinct, which is, ‘I’m just gonna mind my own business, I guess. The world’s gonna implode, what’s the point?’ So it’s very unclear what the call to this generation is – what are we supposed to do exactly?

“The generation itself has built a lot of rules about how you’re supposed to succeed or fail within it. They’ve tried to create this new order of, ‘Oh yeah, everything’s equal.’ But there’s no path to redemption built. There’s no way to come in and be like, ‘Hey, I don’t have the right opinions. Can you help me learn?’”

STRANGER THINGS & TARANTINO

Of course, for my Gen X cohort, Maya’s parents – who met while filming the 1998 sci-fi thriller Gattaca – were cultural icons. Ethan Hawke rose to fame through his roles in celebrated movies like Reality Bites, Training Day and Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, while Uma Thurman starred in a trilogy of Quentin Tarantino masterpieces, starting with Pulp Fiction and continuing with Kill Bill 1 and 2.

Growing up, how aware was Maya of her parents’ status?

“I really wasn’t aware of it all until late high school,” she replies. “Cos they weren’t that popular with kids – they didn’t do kids’ movies. They did serious adult films, so it wasn’t that relevant until I was old enough for kids’ parents to start letting them watch Pulp Fiction.”

Maya herself first came to popular attention when cast in season three of Stranger Things, which first arrived on Netflix exactly eight years ago, in July 2016. The creation of North Carolina identical twins Matt and Ross Duffer, the series focuses on a group of youngsters in the ’80s Midwest, who have to contend with a hostile alternate dimension called the Upside Down, a portal to which is opened by a nearby government research facility.

An ingenious aesthetic mix of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King – with additional influence from the likes of Wes Craven, John Carpenter and David Lynch – Stranger Things, whose cast also includes stars like Winona Ryder, Matthew Modine and David Harbour, proved a cultural sensation and one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits. Hawke was cast as Robin Buckley, who works alongside Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) in the Scoops Ahoy ice cream shop and subsequently comes out as a lesbian.

Later in the series, Robin and Steve also work together in a video store, which particularly resonated with me, given that I grew up in the ’80s and my parents owned a video store (“Really?” beams Maya. “That’s so cool!”) But while it focuses primarily on Gen X kids, Stranger Things has notably proven a hit with audiences all of ages.

Maya Hawke in Stranger Things

“Well, I think the show is really smart,” says Maya. “They do three things at once. I’m sure there’s more than that, but I see three real things. First, I think it would be a worthwhile show if there were no monsters and it wasn’t set in the ’80s. If it were just a social dynamic – where people have crushes on each other, and experience personal development, and friendships break up – that’s Freaks And Geeks right there. That’s a show in and of itself.

“Then the horror and sci-fi show would be good enough on its own, without that. And maybe an ’80s nostalgia show would be good on its own. So when you combine all three, you have a really winning recipe.”

How did Maya find stepping into the show, given that it was already established as a cultural phenomenon?

“It’s interesting, I’ve gone through the same process twice,” she says. “Obviously, Inside Out 2 was a sequel and I’ve also done Stranger Things. It is totally intimidating, because you don’t want to be the thing that doesn’t work, in a recipe that works. You don’t want to be the sugar in the bolognese! I’m always nervous, but you just need to come at it as an actor, like it’s an art project.

“You go, ‘Okay, there’s a need for new energy here – I’ll bring it.’ Don’t get too preoccupied with, ‘Oh, this is gonna make me a star.’ If you can retain the right perspective, then you’re set for success.”

Another notable moment for Hawke came her with her casting as Flowerchild, one of the Manson cult members, in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 blockbuster, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. How did she find the experience?

“Well, I didn’t work on it for very long,” she says. “I was just there for a day or so. But it was amazing. There are only a few people alive who have the freedom to make art films with a lot of money – it’s just a really rarefied air. They’re barely making any new people who are allowed to do that. It’s mostly a dying class of people who are let do it; you could almost count them on one hand.

“So it’s very special to get to step onto a set like that, where the only goal is to make art and be good. You will do the scene until it is good and no one is rushing you. Also, you have plenty of money to make it. That I think is extremely unusual and it was a total honour to be a part of.”

What was it like being directed by Tarantino?

“His love of filmmaking is so contagious and powerful,” says Maya. “Nothing about the process of filmmaking is exhausting to him. It seems like it doesn’t drain him, it adds to his energy. So, it’s remarkable just being around that level of enthusiasm. I can’t remember who it is right now, but there’s a comedian who talks about how the biggest dream in a room is always very powerful.”

“If you walk into a room, and you’re the person with the biggest dream, that energy is extremely contagious and people will gravitate to you. It’s important to let yourself have a big dream, and Quentin’s dream is very big and powerful, and magnetic.”

This year actually marks the 30th anniversary of Tarantino’s crime classic Pulp Fiction, in which Uma Thurman gave a career-defining performance as gangster’s moll Mia Wallace. Like many, the film had a massive impact on me when I saw at 16, and was profoundly influential in making me want to write about movies, music and culture. I wonder when Maya first saw it, and what her relationship to it is?

“I saw it not very long ago,” she says. “It was probably when I was 20 or 21. So it took me a long time to get to it, because it’s a weird thing with my parents’ really big, influential movies. It’s never the right time. You don’t want to watch it alone on an airplane, and you don’t want to watch it as the family movie that night, with everyone on the couch. You don’t wanna do that! So I actually went to Quentin’s house to watch it.

“He’s got an amazing home theatre, and he’s one of the few special people who really enjoys watching their own movies. I think directors are different to actors, who are more self-conscious about watching their own work. Directors are more like, ‘Yeah, let’s watch it – I’d love to see this thing I made!’ So I went with him and watched that film, and it was just amazing. I was really blown away by it – it was really cool.”

INSIDE OUT 2 & FILMING IN DUN LAOGHAIRE

Elsewhere in her screen career, Maya has also starred in the year’s biggest box hit, Pixar’s animation sequel Inside Out 2. The story of teenage girl Riley’s emotional growth, Maya plays the role of Anxiety in the movie. It serves as an interesting thematic parallel with the Chaos Angel track ‘Dark’, which deals with the anxiety the singer once felt about falling asleep. Is there too much anxiety going around in her creative life at the moment, I wonder?

“You know, kind of,” she says. “I think that’s true. I’ve done a lot of interviews where people have been like, ‘Oh my god!’ Or even friends of mine have been like, ‘That character Anxiety is so much like you.’ I find it extremely hurtful! I remember in acting school, the teachers trying to get me to drop my shoulders, so I could broaden my range of capacity. Occasionally, I worry that I’ve used my kind of jokey character, my little nervous character, too much.

“It’s just a character, but it’s one I love to play, and it’s really fun. It’s not me, but occasionally when I hear things like that, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’ve done too much of this in my career, between Robin and Anxiety. I need to undo this.’ I have anxieties, but I don’t have a medical condition. Nor do I really identify with my anxiety. I see it as something I deal with sometimes, but not as a feature of my personality.”

She teases out the idea further.

“I think that’s something going on right now,” Maya continues. “People are taking a problem in their life and identifying it as their personality. I’m really dyslexic, and it was extremely important to my mom that I understand that I have dyslexia – I am not dyslexic. Like, ‘I am dealing with this thing, and it’s kind of a problem in my life, but it’s not who I am. I’m an awesome painter, poet and creative person, and I’m great at taking hikes.’

“That was just me as a little kid. She wanted me to feel confident about the things I was good at, and not be hyper-focused on my challenges. So I feel that way about my anxiety too.”

Currently on track to gross a billion dollars, Inside Out 2 has also been credited with saving the box office this summer, alongside a series of movies that have commercially under-performed.

“Yeah, it’s success has been amazing,” enthuses Hawke. “Since the pandemic, I’ve gone to a lot of empty movie theatres, and it really makes me cry. I remember I went to see this movie about the shorting of the GameStop stock. I saw it in an empty theatre and I thought the movie was awesome. I was sitting there at the end crying, and nobody was there. It made me extremely sad.

“I just felt like, ‘What is going on, guys? Why aren’t we out here watching this movie?’ Companies are more and more relying on the social media following of their casts to advertise films, and it doesn’t work. You have to advertise a movie, you have to do billboards and trailers. Your favourite actor posting that they’re in a movie is not enough to get you to go to theatre.

“You cannot rely on that, so I think it’s really inspiring to have a moment like this, where people are going to see this movie. The industry is changing, but it’s not over. So we have just have to figure out how to change with it.”

Finally, although filming on Stranger Things has thus far hindered Maya’s ability to tour, she notes that its imminent conclusion has freed up her schedule, and that her shows are unlikely to be solely Stateside. Has she ever visited Ireland before?

“I have,” she nods. “My first job was Little Women for the BBC and it filmed in Dun Laoghaire. I remember getting the train along the coast into the city centre, it was amazing. I was there for three months and I loved it so much. I can’t wait to go back some day.”

Chaos Angel is out now.