Maya Hawke EMBRACES ‘nepo baby’ label as daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman declares: ‘I’m comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway’

Maya Hawke — who is the daughter of A-list stars Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke — is proudly embracing the ‘nepo baby’ label.

In a new interview with The Times, Maya, 25, said that she’s completely comfortable with being lumped in with other kids of Hollywood stars as she pursues her own career in acting and music.

‘There are so many people who deserve to have this kind of life who don’t, but I think I’m comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway,’ the New York City native explained. ‘And I know that my not doing it wouldn’t help anyone.’

She added, ‘I saw two paths when I was first starting, and one of them was: change your name, get a nose job and go to open casting roles.’ 

But ultimately, she chose the other path where she, instead, embraced having famous parents.

Hawke acknowledges that the relationships she has with her parents has afforded her a certain level of privilege.

‘It’s okay to be made fun of when you’re in rarefied air. It’s a lucky place to be,’ she explained. ‘My relationships with my parents are really honest and positive, and that supersedes anything anyone can say about it.’

Hawke then recalled her interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 where she shared how she landed a role in Quentin Tarantino’s comedy-drama film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

At the time, she revealed how she ‘got an audition for the project through the normal channels through my agents [and] I did an audition in my bedroom with my dad …  we sent in the tape to Quentin and I got a callback.’

Using the hindsight is 20/20 rule, Hawke wishes she would have used a better choice of words when describing the process that led her to getting the small role of Flow Child.

‘I’ve been wildly made fun of for this clip when I said, on the red carpet, that I auditioned. I never meant to imply that I didn’t get the part for nepotistic reasons – I think I totally did.’

While the actress has wholeheartedly embraced the nepo baby moniker in helping her get in on the Tarantino cast without hesitation, she was among several others who could proudly where the label.

Along with Hawke, Tarantino also hired Margaret Qualley, who’s mother is Andie MacDowell, the star of the drama film Sex, Lies, And Videotape (1989), to play the role of Pussycat. 

Plus, Rumer Willis also scored a role to play Joanna Pettet, and like Hawke, she has two famous parents in Demi Moore and Bruce Willis.

Her parents actually met on the set of the dystopian science fiction film Gattaca in 1996 and went on to date for nearly two years before marrying in may 1998.

Eventually, they decided to split amid allegations of Hawke’s infidelity, and ended up filing for divorce the following year, which was finalized in 2005.

Her embracement of her lineage has even gone as far as working with both her mother and father on separate production over the past year or so.

She starred in the crime comedy thriller film The Kill Room (2023) that had her mother in the leading lady role alongside Joe Manganiello, Debi Mazar, Dree Hemingway, Samuel L. Jackson and Liv Morgan.

And then Maya Hawke got work with her dad by scoring the lead role in the biographical drama film Wildcat, for which the elder Hawke directed and co-wrote with Shelby Gaines.

Music is another passion that she shares with her father. With her new release of Chaos Angel on Friday, May 31, she now has three studio albums on her resume.

In the lead up to her new album, the musician dropped three singles as part of the promotion: Missing Out, Dark and Hang In There.

Hawke says Chaos Angel is an ‘altogether happier album’ than its predecessor Moss (2020), even though she worked with many of the same contributors such as Christian Lee Hutson, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe.

For her latest acting gig, Hawke is voicing the role of Anxiety, a new orange anxious emotion, in Inside Out 2, which is the long-awaited sequel to Inside Out (2015) that was a huge hit nearly a decade ago, earning $858.8 million at the worldwide box office against a budget of $175 million.