Maya Hawke: Lucy, is that right?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: Lucy--

David Remnick: [unintelligible 00:00:04] This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Maya Hawke: "Lucy wants to write the next great American novel. She can't even read the bottle. I might be a genius--"

David Remnick: Maya Hawke broke out as an actor five years ago in the cast of Stranger Things. Since then, she seems to be everywhere, including last year's Asteroid City and Maestro. She's also a musician and that's no little side project for her. Her debut was praised in Pitchfork and Maya Hawke is about to release her third album. It's called Chaos Angel. Staff writer Rachel Syme caught up with her at rehearsal.

Maya Hawke: "Lucy wants to write the next great American novel. She can't even read the bottle."

Rachel Syme: I wanted to talk to Maya because I think she is one of the most interesting young performers working today and a true artistic polymath. It's been a huge chunk of her life being on Stranger Things, especially-- well, the pandemic took a chunk out of it, but she has been on that show since she was 19 years old and she's now 25. At the same time, she is a musician on her third record. She's doing so many different things on so many different levels that I find that really interesting as a model for a young person's career right now in Hollywood.

[MUSIC - Maya Hawke: Missing Out]

Rachel Syme: You're here rehearsing, and then the day after, you fly back down to Atlanta?

Maya Hawke: I was supposed to be the day after, but then their schedule is constantly changing, so now I'm going to fly back on Friday.

Rachel Syme: Either way, you're going back to the set of Stranger Things.

Maya Hawke: I am going back to the set of Stranger Things.

Rachel Syme: Is that a little bit of whiplash for you to code-switch between the music and the acting, or do you find there's a fluidity between the two things, or how do you put your different hats on?

Maya Hawke: Yes, is it whiplash? No, not for me because I really feel like it all comes from the same place in me. My desire to be a good team player is huge in me. I feel like I'm on a team here in this room working on this song. I feel like I'm on a team when I'm on the set of Stranger Things. The part I'm playing is different but the energy to which I go into that is really similar. I don't feel whiplash. The only thing that feels like whiplash is after we do this rehearsal and everyone's ready, it's like, "Oh, I just want to go on tour."

It's almost more of a letdown than a whiplash. It's like, "Ooh, I feel ready to cook something up and express this thing." I want to go do it, and now, I'm not, and I'm going to go back and put that on pause and refrigerate it for a while. I felt the same thing leaving Stranger Things. I was like, "Wait. Oh, no, I don't want to go back to the city now. I've got a good hit on this monologue for next week and I want to get it right." It's always-- interruptions are hard.

Rachel Syme: Now, you're a front woman, you have been for some time, but you're about to go on tour soon in the next year.

Maya Hawke: I mean, soon [chuckles].

Rachel Syme: Do you feel like you inhabit a character as the musician, Maya? When you're doing this, you feel like you're like, "Now, I'm Mick Jagger. Now, I'm rockstar me"?

Maya Hawke: No. I feel like I'm me. When I'm acting, I inhabit the character that I'm playing. Sometimes I have to screw my courage to the sticking place and that's a bit of a character, which like, it's me who is willing to stand up on stage and try to make small talk with strangers, and try to sing songs, which is me a little bit more courageous than I feel, but it's still just me. It's like just me being like, "Okay, let's go into battle."

Rachel Syme: What's your take on performing as a musician in front of a crowd? Is there a certain character that you inhabit when you do it? Do you have to get yourself in a certain mental state to be up there?

Maya Hawke: I'm still learning. I feel like partly why I played guitar at Carnegie last night, and then I've been practicing a lot, and I want to play more of my songs on stage, even though I work with some of the best guitar players, I think, in the world, but even if it's not actually contributing, it's inspiring for young girls to see a girl stand on stage and hold an instrument. Even if I'm playing badly, it's like, I don't know, that feels like it matters, mattered to me when I saw it, mattered to me a lot. There's that.

Then there's also, it saves you a lot of trouble with figuring out what to do with your body. Finding my own relationship to my body on stage has been a real journey. I've generally not been a person who's that comfortable in their body. I think I used to exercise and eat only to get smaller, like so many women. Then I started understanding that actually, I could exercise and eat to raise my capacity, my capacity for movement, my flexibility, my strength, my energy.

I'm late to the game of getting to know my body, but actually, weirdly, I performed on Fallon in 2023. The tour I went on that led up to that performance was the tour where I figured out how I want to move my body. It's very hands-forward and a little bit like, "I'm crazy," but in, I don't know, my own way. You could see it in that performance, I think, is where I'm working from and what I'm working towards.

Rachel Syme: Can we talk about a couple specific songs on the record?

Maya Hawke: Yes.

Rachel Syme: Missing Out, you're going to be singing. Can you tell me about the story of that song?

Maya Hawke: Yes. I was unemployed and I started really wanting to hang out with my brother at college because I never went to college, and I missed him, and I wanted to see what the vibe was. It was a really emotional experience for me because I had a real chip on my shoulder about having not gotten into any colleges and not really wanting to have gone but then missing out on the connection to your generation that you have, which is where the title comes from, like missing out on your own generation, basically.

Instead, skipping into this adult world that is great and that I love, but it was like, "Oh, did I skip a step? Did I skip a big step?" I put in a little time, and I snuck into some classes, and I went to some parties. I don't know. I think it healed whatever that thing was in me and made me see what it was that was great, what it was that I actually liked about my own life, and that was really interesting and cool.

Rachel Syme: Did it make you feel in the end like you're like, "Yes, I'm good. I feel like it's good that I didn't do this or--"?

Maya Hawke: Yes, or not good that I didn't, but I'm okay with my path.

Rachel Syme: What are a few lines from the song that are your favorites or that you feel are emblematic of the writing process?

Maya Hawke: I like those lines a lot. I'm extremely proud of the first line, "Lucy wants to write the next great American novel" because when I was in high school, I really feel like I felt that way, like I want to do something great. I want to do something amazing. How I got to the point where I was like, "Oh, I'm actually happy with my life," is by hearing someone in this social circle that I was visiting say that, "I want to write the next great American novel," and me being like, "That's not what you want, you want to write a novel, start with a novel. Maybe a novel about fill-in-the-blank, a novel about my relationship with scissors, whatever, fill-in-the-blank, and get specific, get personal, get to work, and don't worry about how it will be received."

The word 'great' is like, that's what other people think. That's not what you think. That was a big epiphany for me where I was like, "Oh, cool. Yes, that's what I want. Okay, let's get back on the road."

David Remnick: Maya Hawke's album Chaos Angel comes out later this spring. She spoke to The New Yorker's Rachel Syme.

[MUSIC - Maya Hawke: Missing Out] [MUSIC - Maya Hawke: Missing Out]

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