From living room plays to ‘Wildcat’: Father-daughter duo Ethan and Maya Hawke gush about new film

nypost.com:

Maya Hawke says making “Wildcat” with her dad, Ethan Hawke, felt effortless.“We’ve spent our whole lives making things together, talking about art, seeing plays, going to art museums,” she told The Post at a recent Cinema Society screening of their movie, “Wildcat.”“Working on plays in the living room, helping me with audition tapes and it felt like an extremely natural extension of the way that we’ve always communicated.”The movie, co-written and directed by Ethan, is a biographical drama about Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor and her struggle to publish her first novel.

Maya, 25, stars as O’Connor and it also features Laura Linney, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman and Liam Neeson.The “Training Day” star, 53, explained that the movie was Maya’s idea.“A movie that she wanted to see primarily about a young woman’s relationship to herself and her work,” he shared. “You see a ton of movies about men and their relationship to themselves and their work, you don’t see that as often with young women.”Maya added that she was also drawn to O’Connor’s deep relationship with her Catholic belief and added that her dad often joked that: “instead of taking us to church on Sundays, he would take us to the Film Forum.”The “Stranger Things” star is the oldest child from Ethan’s marriage to Uma Thurman.

They also share a son, Levon, 22, who has a big part in the movie.The New York premiere at the IFC Center held special meaning for both father and daughter.Ethan got emotional telling the crowd that he would often take Maya to the art house movie theater and then would go for coffee and donuts after a screening to discuss what they had just watched.