Maya Hawke shared some hard truths about the Hollywood auditioning process while on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. Hawke shared that in this age of social media, “the line between actor and celebrity has gotten extremely blurry,” going further to state, “the industry keeps changing, and you have to change with it… that all of these things are getting blurred.” Hawke then alleged that more than a few producers in Hollywood let an actor’s social media follower count dictate whether to cast them or not.
Explaining that while on sets, Hawke remembers speaking to intelligent directors about wanting to delete her social media, mainly Instagram, and they strongly advise her against it. The reasoning being that “when I’m [the director] casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers to get of the cast that I cast, so if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand that these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.” Though Hawke did reassure that there are a “few directors…who have reputations that are vast enough and have shown how well they can work…you can really focus and sit there and make a film with them.” Hawke went on to name Quentin Tarantino, Bradley Cooper, and Wes Anderson as filmmakers that she has collaborated with who fit those descriptors.
Further into the interview, Hawke revealed another hardship she faced in Hollywood that happened when a producer confronted Hawke on her appearance. Stating that the producer told her, “that I looked prettier with my mouth closed, and that I should close my mouth after I speak more often.” Hawke shared that she was annoyed and “really upset” because the character that she was playing “didn’t care about looking pretty, and they were unselfconscious. And so it was clearly just a desire of the aesthetic of the thing.” Hawke never identified the names of the producers and/or directors who made those comments.
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