Ethan Hawke has a new movie on the festival circuit: Wildcat, a drama about the Southern writer Flannery O’Connor. It’s a chance for him to do something he’s never done before: direct his daughter. Maya Hawke has come into her own over the last few years, acting in Stranger Things and Fear Street and Asteroid City, plus standing out as a singer. They appear to have a good relationship, enough that she can make fun of him for badly hitting on Rihanna. Heck, it’s not even weird for them that he directed her doing intimate scenes.
In a double interview with Variety (in a bit caught by Insider), there are two scenes that might be weird for a father and daughter to shoot together. Wildcat dips in and out of some of O’Connor’s work, with Maya playing those characters, too. In one, from the short story “Good Country People,” a young woman played by Maya “goes at it with a Bible salesman,” played by Cooper Hoffman. In another, from “Parker’s Back,” she “gets felt up by a ne’er-do-well,” played by Rafael Casal.
Sounds awkward! Well, it wasn’t.
“We were so comfortable with it,” Ethan said, turning to Maya. “I couldn’t care less.”
Maya added that they “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…”
Interjected Ethan, “…by some creepy dad.”