Ethan Hawke on directing daughter Maya in sex scenes: “We were so comfortable with it”
Ethan Hawke has said there was no awkwardness when it came to directing his daughter Maya Hawke in sex scenes.
The pair have collaborated together on the upcoming Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat, where Maya plays the late author as well as six other characters from O’Connor’s short stories.
Two of these short stories feature sex scenes, where Maya stars opposite Cooper Hoffman and Rafael Casal. Despite the potential for awkwardness with her father Ethan directing the project, the pair insisted they were “so comfortable” when it came to tackling those scenes.
“We needed to take care of Rafael and Cooper,” Ethan said with a laugh to Variety. “I think it was weird for them. We were so comfortable with it. I couldn’t care less.”
Maya added: “We made sure to have an intimacy coordinator on set for them. So that they felt safe and comfortable and not like they were being spied on…” to which Ethan replied, “by some creepy dad.”
Wildcat, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, is directed and co-written by Ethan with Shelby Gaines. The film also stars Laura Linney, Philip Ettinger, Steve Zahn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alessandro Nivola and Willa Fitzgerald.
Ethan previously starred alongside Maya in the 2020 miniseries The Good Lord Bird. Maya, meanwhile, will star opposite her mum, Uma Thurman, later this month in The Kill Room.
Maya had her breakthrough role as Robin Buckley in Netflix’s Stranger Things. She has also appeared in films Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Fear Street Part One: 1994 and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City.
Along with being an actor, she has also released two studio albums, ‘Blush’ and ‘Moss’, as a musician. Speaking to NME last year ahead of the second record, Hawke said: “When I was making ‘Blush’, I wanted to do as little as possible to avoid making mistakes. I wanted it to be as stripped-back as possible, I didn’t want to put reverb on my voice, I didn’t want any electronic instruments.
“I think I’ve learned now to be like, ‘Let’s make mistakes, let’s aspire to sound how we actually want to sound – even if it means embarrassing ourselves for being try-hards’.”
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Adam Starkey
NME
