Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Maya Hawke

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Maya Hawke is such a natural fit for Wild Card that she had several answers for many of the questions. The self-described “verbose” musician/actor talks to Rachel about her new album “Maitreya Corso,” and reflects on her identification with her character Anxiety in “Inside Out 2.” Hawke also tells Rachel about her “witch-adjacent” childhood with her mother, Uma Thurman. To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn? A really big one that's so, sounds silly, but was I needed to unlearn that I was crazy. Say more. I had this kind of idea that I was crazy because I was spending a lot of time with people older than me. Yeah. And behaving like a young person. And who was figuring things out and making mistakes and learning a lot. And I had to realize you were not crazy.

You were young. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is Maya Hawke. I have ease with my dynamic with sadness. We have a good, we have a good communication.

Like, and I'm not afraid of sadness. When season five of Stranger Things opens, an evil demon is still trying to destroy the universe, and Maya Hawks' character Robin is working as a DJ at the local radio station. In that moment, all Robin wants to do is play pretty and pink by the psychedelic furs and dedicate it to her girlfriend. Music is her antidote to the ills that have befallen her world. And it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that Maya Hawk has found her own solace in music. It was the other half of her creative brain during the six years she worked on Strangling. Stranger Things, and she is still at it.

Maya's newest album is called Mitrea Corso, and I am so very happy to welcome Maya Hock to Wildcard. Hi! Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So, you know how this goes? We're just going to start. Round one. I'm ready.

I'm ready. Let's go. First three cards, Maya, you pick one, two, or three? I'm being called the three. Yeah. When was a moment you felt proud of yourself as a kid? That's a great question. And I'm trying to think about my answer.

I feel like there are moments, it's hard to separate one's memories or stories they've heard about themselves as a kid that they are proud of now. Like, I'm now very proud that I used to let kids down the slide before me. Like I would stand at the top of the slide. I was really uncomfortable with anyone standing behind me. Yeah. I, like, didn't want the pressure on my turn. I didn't want to have to go so fast because kids were waiting. Yes.

So I would just let kids go in front of me. Totally relate to that. So that I didn't have to have, like, anyone riding my tail, you know, on the slide. Right, because they come up fast. And then you're like, I was trying to slide at my own pace. Yeah, and I'm proud of that now. But I remember being proud. I was cast as one of three jenny's in the first school play I ever did, which was Jenny in the School for Cats.

And I was very proud to be one of the three jenny's. I had no expectation that that would happen. And I remember just being like, wow, I didn't think that anyone liked me. You know, like, I didn't think my teachers saw me. And it was this moment of feeling like I was seen. And so, yeah, that's a moment I remember. I remember feeling proud and then a moment I'm proud of. Two for one.

I have so many questions. Why were there three Jennings? Because don't you remember from school plays when there aren't enough parts for all the kids? They take the big parts and they divide them up. So like one does act one, act two, and act three. So Jenny was like the lead. You were just the one of the trifecta of Jenny's. Yes.

Yes. I was Act two Jenny. There will be people who hear this and think to themselves. That was my – but why did you think you weren't going to be good at acting when your parents, Emma Thurman and Ethan Hawker, very good at acting? Well, I didn't really want to be an actor at that point in time. That was a similar point in time that I got made fun of on the school bus because there were other little girls who went to Chapin. Wait, what was Chapin?

I went to Brewerly, and Brewerley and Cheapen were rivals. So there were other girls who went to Chapin on the bus, and they were like, you – Like, what do you want to be when you grew up? And I said, I wanted to be a veterinarian or a farmer. And they said, that's so dumb. You should want to be a movie star. And I said, why? And they were like, because your parents are movie stars.

And I was like, what? Yeah. I didn't really have an awareness of that at the time at all. That was kind of the beginning of my awareness of understanding my parents. Good for your parents. Yeah. Pretty cool. I mean, not quite as impressive as Kate Bush's kids, who apparently found

out Kate Bush was Kate Bush when her song was used on the Stranger Things soundtrack. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. So I was a little earlier than that. Yeah. I always found that I was socially happiest in the artistic environments of school. In play rehearsal, in like creative writing classes, that was where I was socially most

comfortable. And so that really pulled me in that direction. before I'd even had it as a twinkling my eye of what I might want to do professionally. Yeah. It was just a good time. It was just where people were open-hearted with each other. You know, it was just where people were willing to play, and they weren't like, you look stupid in that, you know, or why can't you do that? And it was where there was no pressure on me to read because it was all about spoken language and memorized language. and that I was really good at.

And so, I don't know. It was like, but I think I also grew up kind of understanding art as something in the water of everybody's life, which I now know is not true. Yeah. But I thought it was just, this is something everybody does as their hobby. My parents, of course, they are doing the school play too when I go with them to set. This is everybody participates in the arts. Yeah. And then some people do other stuff for money.

some people don't have to do other stuff for money, but everyone does the arts. Was kind of my understanding. So it seemed totally normal. Of course I'd do the school play. Everybody does the arts. I love that so much. Also, we should just note, because you said it, reading was hard, and you've talked about that for you. Oh, yeah.

Well, I was, I'm dyslexic, and the first school that I went to was a very kind of straightforward, uh, academically competitive environment. And I think that if I went to a different kind of, school, like if I went to a Montessori school or a school like I ended up going to for high school or a Waldorf school, I would maybe not have been diagnosed or noticed, I think, because it wasn't so bad, but it was bad enough to deeply be unable to keep up academically with the fast-paced kind of traditional education that I was getting as a young girl. Same place I did Jenny in the School for Cats.

And so that kind of affected my path. But it did take them until, like, I was in the third grade to figure out I was dyslexic because I was such a good memorizer. I would, like, come in with my... You can get away with a lot that way. You can get away with a lot that way. And you're good at reading your lines. Yeah. I mean, just sort of, they kept bumping me into lower and lower and lower and lower reading groups until they were like, you should probably leave.

And I was like, okay. Yeah. Okay. Next question. One, two, or three. Okay. I get a sense for one. This time. No, no, two, two, two, too, too, sorry.

I love an audible in the moment. It's so interesting to me. It's like we could have gone here. We're not. We're not going here. We're going here. This is essentially how I do tarot card readings. I have no idea how to read tarot card readings. I have no idea how to read tarot card readings. I have no idea how I'll just draw a couple cards from the deck and then I'll put my hand over them and try to feel which one calls to me and pick that one up. And that's how I give myself a tarot card reading. So I want everyone to play this game. I want there to be like some kind of vibe you're picking up. And this is the card you were viving on. So, what's something your parents taught you to love? Oh, well, I mean, we almost, that sort of fits so beautifully in with what we were just talking about because the arts is definitely one of them. But I'm trying to think that one's so obvious. I'm trying to think something else more kind of odd or surprising. You know, my mother really taught me to love and respect nature and to like love gardening and being in nature and to love thinking about like herbal remedies to things. Really?

And yeah, and like just like, you know, you get a cold and she would make me a pineapple skin tea because the pineapple, the enzymes in the pineapple skin are good for getting rid of your cold. And it's stuff like that that's just sort of like witch adjacent, you know, like slightly, like not, you know, we're not bubbling over it. witch. Yeah, it's not, you know, toil and trouble. But it's that, it's wickenry, you know, some light, something that could potentially get you burned at the stake, but that really is just light wickening. I like it. I like living right there, right before the burn. Right there at the edge. Yeah. Right before you start making a call to Satan. So how did the love of, I mean, you did grow up in Manhattan. There's not, so we're talking like a balcony, like herb garden. Oh, okay. No, I was between Manhattan and upstate New York. And my.

Mom is extremely, like, nature-focused, and she's a gorgeous gardener. Even a part of not knowing what my parents' deal was professionally was because most of the time I spent with my mother, she was barefoot in our garden on her knees, like picking stinging nettles to make soups out of. So I really, which is also another incredible herbal remedy for what ails you. I was just going to ask you a steamy nettle soup good? It's amazing. Really? It's my favorite soup, and it's so hard to get stinging nettles, and you can only get them, like, really this time of year. And the only place in the city that they sell them is Union Square Farmers Market.

They're like at no grocery stores. So, and they're amazing. And so good for you. So good for you. Okay, stinging nettle soup. You have to blanch them first to get rid of the stinging part. Obviously, Maya. Obviously, you have to blanch them, yes.

But it's a witchiness. Like a kind of witchy love of nature and a love of herbal remedies and kind of different sorts of medicines for what ails you. Is your dad magic? I mean, did he... He's magic in a different way. He's a magical thinker. Uh-huh. Yeah.

I see that. I see that. I see that. I wouldn't say he's witchy, but he is like, you know, he used to do, like, treasure hunts and scavenger hunts for me as a kid. and like where he'd write little notes and like paint a map on a watercolor and cut it up. So he's like crafty and magical, but not, he's not witchy. Yeah, yeah, I know. You know. Okay.

Next one. One, two or three. Three. Three. What's something you took away from your first job? What was your first job? Oh, interesting. Well, my very, very first job was babysitting. Yeah.

And I took away from that that I, I wasn't going to do a lot of babysitting. It wasn't your life's calling, no. Yeah, that I didn't want to be doing that. We should exempt babysitting as a first job, but yes. We should, we should. And then my real first job was little women for the BBC. Huh?

But yeah, I turned 19 doing little women, and I really learned a lot about friendship. I'd never had a group of friends, really. I'd had different kind of individual friendships, and I vacationed in some people's groups of friends. But the bonding element that happened between the sisters and Lori was so intense. It was unlike any friend group experience of my life. And I really, I A, learned that I'm kind of not a friend group person, even though that experience was amazing. I'm really an individual friendships person, and I love it when, like, everyone becomes friends. but the group dynamics are intense for me.

And I was kind of whisked away into them. But I was so lucky to be with the most wonderful people I'd ever met and the most wonderful actors. And we had such a profound time together. And so I just, I think I learned that I was, that I'd made good decisions that I wanted to be an actor, that I was in exactly where I belonged. And I learned about friend groups and love and kind of sisterhood in a way that I hadn't known about it before, which is also, I'm now reminded that I also modeled before I ever did that,

which was a job, and I learned that being a model is really hard. Yeah. That I thought it was, like, I learned about just, like, how much harder that job was than I thought it was. On your, like, really on my spirit at the time. Oh, on your spirit. Both, both, no, kind of physically hard, too, like long hours, crazy days, but on my spirit, it was hard, because at the, like, none of the, like, none of the,

clothes fit me. They were all too small on my first modeling job. And then it was, and they'd only brought clothes that were too small. I'm so glad you said the clothes were too small and not I was too big for the clothes. Yeah, they were too small. Yeah, they were too small for you. They were too small. I was the only person doing this campaign and the clothes didn't fit me. And it wasn't like, people were like, oh my God, we're so sorry the clothes didn't fit you. They were like, how do we get you into these clothes? So they were like, you are too big and these clothes are the perfect size. They were like, Too big. Yeah.

They were like, you were too big in these clothes are the perfect size, and what are we going to do about it? Yeah. And it was sort of like, I don't know. So that was also – and I've now told you about, like, nine jobs to answer your question that all in one way or another are and are not my first job. Maya, as expected, you are knocking it out of the park here. I'm very verbose. I'm very verbose. You can choose – you can pick and choose whatever answers you like.

Okay, we're going to pull back from the game for a few minutes to talk about your new album, my Trea Korso. this is your fourth studio album congratulations. Thank you. It's a very big deal. It's a lot of you. I mean, some of the point of bringing up stranger things, obviously you're in the cultural firmament in such a big way through that role. But you're also, it's an ensemble cast.

It's the Duffer Brothers production. It came out of their brain. Totally. For you, I imagine, music gets to be this thing that is just yours. Yeah. I mean, I think that my thing with me, is that I can't stop. I just can't stop myself from wrestling with ideas and emotions and feelings,

and this is the way that I have learned and that I learned as a kid, really, to kind of, you know, when you have an epiphany of sorts and you want to log it, you want to be like, oh, okay, I want to try to track this. It's sort of like my diary where I'm like, okay, I just changed. Yeah. And it's like, okay, I just changed. I just leveled up. I just grew. I just learned something I didn't know. Right. And I want to find the right words to express that lesson I learned. And then kind of freeze it in this locked case. Yeah. And that's my songwriting process. And I just kind of can't stop doing it. And so that's why we're on to album four. But then weirdly putting it out, it's like so, so. scary because it's both this private you thing, this log book you've made. And then you're watching it,

I think of releases almost more as funerals than birthdays because it's not yours anymore. It's now going to become its whole own thing. And you probably won't even be able to understand. And they're going to take pieces away. And it might not be the pieces you thought they would take away. And then it becomes something else to other people. Yeah. And I think years later, you can look at what it was to other people and really see what they saw. And I think that that is a beautiful process. Like I love, I have so much love for my first album now.

And I didn't for years after it. But I now look back on it and I'm like, oh wow, I can now look at this and see what other people saw when they listen to it. And I can feel what that moment in my life was and have so much love for that person that I was. But right away, it just feels like this perfect, moment of misunderstanding. Like, you took your clothes off in the lunchroom and everyone's looking

at you and they see something totally different than who you are. Yeah. God. And so the release process is always hard. Yeah. But, yeah. So introduce us to Matrea Corso. Well, I would say the record's about two things. It's about learning how to be. be a public person, learning how to manage workaholism and how to protect one's private life from that, how to care about your private life, how to put energy into that, and while still being so ambitious and wanting so much for yourself and wanting to do work you love and, you know, wanting to work with people you admire and how to kind of balance those two things. And I think it's about falling in love.

And with, in a really deep way, I think a lot of the time when people talk about falling in love, they're talking about kind of limerence and lust. And I hope that what this record explores is a kind of deeper romantic friendship and, or at least the aspiration

to move towards that. You made it with your husband, Christian Lee Hudson. Mm-hmm. Where do we, hear his imprint on these songs. Can you point to a song where you're like, oh, there he is? Oh, totally. I mean, there's one song that called Slacker and the Rye, because I wrote this chorus that was like, I haven't done much with a lot I've been giving, treat you like a crutch and a lover and living. And, you know, it came to me with the words and the music, and I showed it

Christian, he was like, that's awesome. I love that. And I spent a long time trying to write verses to it and eventually sort of hit a wall. And we were on a road trip. And he just started, like, he writes amazingly when he drives. And he just started going like, pacing outside in my new clothes, kicking ball tires with my steel toes. And I was like, oh, that's it. Those are the words for, those are the words for haven't done much chorus. And then we spent that whole drive just passing back and forth

working on these lyrics and like he'd be like okay he'd be like I have a lyric from years ago that was remember that night back in Salt Lake a couple hundred screen ages rest in the stage and I was like oh

amazing I like okay what if the next part was I thought I felt like a something in a hedge maze and he was like, no, a rat in a lab maze. And I was like, oh, okay. And then I'm like, all I ever cared about was keeping you safe. And he's like, yes, that's great. And so we really, like, you feel his imprint and he wrote that music to the chorus. So like, that's a great song of just like describing how we wrote together and where his imprint is. It's lyrical, it's musical. But his biggest imprint is, or to me, I mean, I don't know if it's fair to say his biggest imprint,

but a really important imprint he had was the imprint he has had on my confidence in myself as a musician. I just got off tour where I played guitar on stage for the first time, and he owes all the credit for that for making me believe that I could. I really did not believe that I could, and I did not believe it was important that I did. And I wanted to, but I was like, you and Will and all these people we work with all the time are so much better guitar players than me, why should I play? He's like, because it's your song and you wrote your song and you're going to feel so proud standing up there and playing. And he was totally right.

And he helped me practice and learn. And he just started encouraging me when we were making the record. Like I would be walking down the rooms of our house, folding laundry, singing a melody. And he'd be like, that's a good melody. Remember it, record it. And I'd be like, no, I'm not a melody writer. You are. And he really taught me to believe in myself as a melody writer.

What a wonderful person. Because you can live a whole lifetime being like, I'm not good enough to do that. They're experts who do that. That's not my thing. I can't. And it sounds like he's just like that, erase all that. Arase all that. Arase all of it. You do what makes you happy. You get to make art. You get to play guitar and write songs. And the classic thing of like the point of it, the point of art is to try to get your eunis on the page, right? Like your uniqueness. And he's like, all of those things that you see as your limitations are what make you you, and your strengths are a part of what make

you you and your strength is your ability to be that bravely. Yeah. And everyone wants, that's what's inspiring. Right. Is to watch somebody be themselves. That's right. That's right. Well, sounds like you picked a good one, Maya.

Thanks. I'm feeling pretty good about it. Okay. Round two. We're back in it. One, two, or three. One. How comfortable are you with change? Heavily comfortable with change, really uncomfortable with transitions.

Differentiate those for me. You're fine once you get through the transition, but you don't like the anticipation of the change. Yes. Oh my God, that's so, I am the opposite. Really? me on this side of the mountain, like when I can anticipate this is going to happen? I love right here. I love being on the cusp of something. It's my favorite thing to be in anticipation of change. The change. I don't think it's healthy, to be perfectly honest. I think it's a little mental. But I'm very interested in a person who intentionally doesn't like the transition. Well, I think that, like, for me, I think it comes from going back and forth

between my parents' house when I was a kid. And the hardest days of that were the day where the transition happened. Totally. The packing? Aren't you bringing a little backpack? Yeah, the packing, and also just like the spiritual shift in rules and expectations.

Yeah. And like energy and values. And I think, like, getting ready to move through that shift was really hard for me as a kid. And I think now I feel it come up whenever shifts happen. Like, transition days, like, we talk about them in our house with, like, a, hey, why are you being weird? Oh, it's because it's a transition day. Got it. Like, it's a day we have to go to the airport.

A day one person has to go to the airport and the other one doesn't. Like, I would say, like, one of the most common fights we get in is, like, I sometimes get to where I'm like, if you're going to leave, leave. Like, you know, that's, like, please. Can we just get to the other side of the leaving? Can we just get to the other side? Like, I'm terrible at goodbye. Like, I'm terrible at goodbyes and doing all that. So I really struggle with that.

What you said I relate to, there are things with, like, big life changes, like moving or, you know, all these things where when I'm thinking about doing them, I'm so excited. Yeah. When I'm doing them, it's horrible. Right. And then when I'm on the other side of it, I'm so happy that I did it. Yeah. So I don't know. Like there's, I understand what you're saying and I don't think it sounds crazy.

Thank you for affirming me. I have often thought that, but it gets a little dangerous when I, I, it's like a high I get from the anticipation of the change. And so. I get like this too. I get this way too. As you grow up, you need to stop changing some things. You just need to settle and live your life and you make certain commitments and you have to be an adult. But I'm always like, oh, what's a thing?

thing that could change. And now I'm going to sit and think about it and all the possibility that exists around it. And yeah, it's a creative space for me. It's a creative space. It's generative. My notebooks are full of plans for homes I'll never live in. That's right. And like, and ideas about like, I'm constantly talking about moving to Sweden. And like, I probably never will. Sweden is lovely. Sweden's amazing. Yes. I support that choice. Here is Sweden. Like, if you called and said we would like you back, our daughter of our lands, I would return. But I'm one quarter of Swedish.

And I milk it. Yes. I milk it. I make Swedish pancakes and Swedish meatballs and I do Swedish in your design. This is my people's food. Yeah, this is my people's food. I mean, my grandmother is very Swedish, and she kind of set the tone for our traditions. and like we do Christmas at night.

And we do, like, so I milk it, but I did also grow up with a large influence of the culture on the kind of matriarchy of my family. Yeah. Okay. Next three in this round, insights one, two, or three. One again. One again. What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn? It's a big, I have a big, I needed to unlearn believing that I wasn't physically.

strong. I really used to believe that I, that, like, you know, my relationship to my body was all about how, what it looked like, not what it could do. I hated sports. I hated, like, I hated all, and I really had to unlearn that I was bad at that and free myself up to be willing to, like, play physically and be in touch with my body and believe that my body was more about what it could do than what it looked like. And so that was a big one for me. Yeah, that's a big one. And a really big one that's so, sounds silly, but was I needed to unlearn that I was crazy, which I...

Say more. Like, I was a precocious young person. I wanted to be an adult. Yeah. And I did a lot of adult stuff before a lot of my friends and before, like, was in, like, adult relationships before a lot of my friends were. and messing up in adult relationships and making big... What do you mean? Say what do you mean? Like friendships with grownups or romantic relationships that were on an adult level.

Oh! Like, I mean... You were young and you have romantic relationships with people who were older. Older than me, yeah. And then all... But then also, but also with my friends, like that also made me seem older because I was in this adult relationship. And then I would... So I really had kind of an idea about myself that I was like,

Like, I'm crazy Maya. Crazy Maya is always going through a hard breakup or has a new big crush and is madly obsessed with this person or wants to make a big change and move and wants to, like, I had this kind of idea that I was crazy because I was spending a lot of time with people older than me. Yeah. And behaving like a young person. And who was figuring things out and making mistakes and learning a lot. and that made me kind of seem like wild and older to my younger friends.

And I had a lot of older people being like, you need to grow up. Like, you know, and it's always funny. It's like when you're an older person, dating a younger person telling them to grow up, like, one of those two people needs to grow up. And it's probably not the younger person. That's right. You know, but, um. But you were on this amplified, like life was amplified for you in a way at that age. Amplified it.

And I was devouring it. Yeah. Like, I was just, like, devouring it. And it made me, I felt myself making excuses to people all the time for the way that I was acting and just being like kind of starting to embrace the like, I know I'm crazy, but. And it took me a little while to be like, actually I'm not crazy at all. I was 22 in an unusual set of circuit, like, or N21 and 23. It was like my, from like eight, nine, I felt this way a lot from like 17 when I started thinking about working and moving.

out of the house to kind of like 24 was this period of time in my life. And I had to realize you were not crazy. You were young. And like with adult freedom and adult responsibility. And you have now matured and you were never crazy. And so I... You were just trying to find your way. Yeah. Just figuring it out and trying stuff and I'm so proud of all the things I tried and learned about and so happy because I'm, I love all the information that I gained and all the wisdom I have with which to maneuver my life right now and I love my life right now. And it's like not crazy at all. It's like pretty ordinary. And I, and I was, anyway, so I had to unlearn that.

Wow, Maya. A lot, I mean, what comes from those kinds of experiences, that amplification that you were devouring, is some wisdom. You've learned some things in a very short period of time. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. Okay. Three. What's something you still feel you have to prove to people you meet? Ooh. Um, really interesting. But I think the biggest thing, my we The weird chip that I've been working on learning to let go, is it the easiest way to hurt my feelings is if you say that I don't work hard or that I don't. Like, that is my soft spot.

And I think sometimes I work myself into a tizzy because I'm so afraid that someone is going to say that I don't work hard. Where does that come from? The fear about someone judging your work ethic? Did it happen once? It probably comes from my dad. My dad works really hard, and he's really busy, and he puts, his relationship to his work is like so, so the primary relationship in his life, and he puts so much into it. And I think that I really wanted for a long time to show him that I work, that I can work as hard as he does and put as much into it as he does.

And I think I really had some wanting to deep, like, he's always been proud of me. He would make fun of me talking like this, but I so deeply wanted him to be proud of me. And I felt like the best way to gain his pride was to be exhausted in the arts, you know, like to be taking on, to be biting off the whole apple. And I can imagine that in the arts in particular, you still, it's like you feel it is a privilege. It is a beautiful privilege to get to make art. And to make a huge privilege. it's a huge privilege. Based on the whatever, 40 minutes I've known you, I can already tell that you would know that so intrinsically that it is a privilege to get to do it. And the way you deal with that is be like, I'm not going to take one day for granted. Moment of this for granted. That's right. I'm going to prove to people that I deserve my place here and I'm just going to work my butt off. Yeah. And it was when I started kind of trying to untangle that, though I still totally have it. It's the number one way to hurt my feelings.

But I said yes to doing a movie in Atlanta as like second on the call sheet. So like a big leading role at the same time as I was shooting season four of Strange for Things. And I was doing days on one movie and nights on the other. What? Yeah. For like that was one week of days and nights. But I was doing both and I didn't have one day off for two months. That is crazy.

It was crazy. It was crazy. It was crazy. I bought a job. giant bean bag and I brought it with me everywhere. It was a really light beanbag. I was called a moon pod and I bought a moon pod and I brought the moon pod with me everywhere I went. So you just catch the band. Catch as can. And I just, it was wolf, it was wolf knaps. I was doing wolf naps. And it was in that period of time where the pride I had in what I was doing.

Yeah. The like, I'd kind of never felt better about myself. I was so cocky. Like, I'm amazing because I'm not taking care of myself. And it was in that that I started to unwind this pathology. But it's still, and I will, everyone who loves me in my life, when I say I'm saying yes to something, they're like, and what else are you doing at the same time? Are you sure you can handle that? Yeah, right. Last round, beliefs.

One, two, or three? One. One. Two. Oh. Sike. Are you preoccupied with the past, the future, or neither? Oh.

Well, why isn't both an option? It can be. I think I'm more preoccupied with the future these days. I think I used to be way more preoccupied by the past. I still am a little bit. There are some like riddles. of my life that I find myself of when I was not an adult

when I was a kid that I find myself continually trying to solve and unpack and I'm preoccupied by that but then but more and more I'm less and less preoccupied by that and more constantly thinking about what I want the future to look like how am I going to move to Sweden do I think the Swedish embassy will accept me

why didn't my mom get her Swedish? I think that it's the future that is really kind of winding me up these days. And to the point to which I recently went to a party of some friends of mine from high school and I just saw all these people that I hadn't seen in ages. And I got all of these memories just re-downloaded into my brain that I hadn't thought about in so long. Some were positive, some were negative, but they all felt positive to me. And I was just excited to be having them.

And that felt like a moment where I was like, oh, personal growth has occurred. These things are not upsetting to me anymore. They're like, I haven't thought about them in two years. And it's so fun to think about them again. And so I think these days more the future, but that's kind of very new. And is it to the point where it's debilitating in any way? Or you're able to kind of... I think my husband and I are balance each other out well.

he does a good job of being like, okay, but what about today? Like, what are we going to do today? What about this moment? What about this time? And I think that that energy helps me a lot. I think that if I didn't have somebody like that in my life, it could become debilitating. But not necessarily because of anxiety about the future. I have more anxiety about the present.

Like, I didn't call that person back. what's going on with that person? Is that person mad at me? Yeah. That's where my anxiety lives. The future holds possibility and imagination. And I think that the way in which it would become debilitating, it would be about the preoccupation with imagining a beautiful day in the future that therefore does not allow you to enjoy the beautiful day you are in. Yeah, I hear that. I mean, did you have to demonstrate that you were a person who understood anxiety before you were a as anxiety in Inside Out too. Well, I cried during my audition, so I think maybe I just naturally demonstrated that I was,

they cried because they told me the story. You know, that you couldn't read the script or anything before you came in auditioned, obviously. So they told me the story, and just in hearing the story of that movie, I left. It's the most beautiful movie. It's the most beautiful movie. I just love it. I love it so much.

I'm so proud to have been anywhere near it. And I really do struggle with anxiety. I think I, not in the way that, like, I think because I played Robin, who's very chatty and like, and high energy, like, but what if this? And then because I played anxiety, who also has that kind of energy. That's not the volume of my anxiety. And sometimes I tell people like, I don't have anxiety because it's not that kind. Yeah, it doesn't show up that way. It's more like a hippopotamus sitting on my chest.

Like, it's more like the feeling of like, this is going to go really bad. I just can't stop thinking about this thing. But it's like lower and slow and like cold. Like whatever my anxiety animated character that lives in my brain, it's like blue. And it's linked with sadness. And like my sadness and my anxiety and my anger are like all. holding hands on the couch and my anxiety is blue and my anger is very small and um and my sadness is kind of happy oh interesting yeah my sadness might be like pink and uh and that's the i don't know

that's kind of the landscape because you're compensating do you think your sadness tries to compensate for being sad by showing up as pink i think my anxiety i think my anxiety my or my sadness I have ease with my dynamic with sadness. We have a, we have a good, we have a good communication. Yeah. And I'm not afraid of sadness. It's when it, I have some control stuff. And sadness doesn't interact with control.

Sadness is like, we are sad, this happened, there's nothing we can do to change it, how sad. I can hold that space, that sadness. The anxiety comes in because it's a sadness and an anger about something that I think I could change if I was smart enough. And I hate myself for not being able to fix it. Yeah. Oh, those are all the toxic ingredients. Little self-loathing in there. Yeah, yum.

Yeah. All right. Yeah. That was a good one. Thank you. Not that you need to affirm your answers, but that really was. I do. I like answers.

I love affirmation also. I'm desperate for attention. I'm an artist. Do you know that Bo Burnham has that song. He's like about, it's called the artist. I think he wants it buried because you would only find it on YouTube. Or entertainers. Entertainers like to seem complicated, but they're not complicated.

They're just a, have you ever been to a birthday party with toddlers? I don't know. It's like just that they're a, about entertainers or attention horrors. I highly recommend listening to it. It's excellent. One, two, or three? Okay.

One. I mean it this time. You do. Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined? Um, there are moments. I don't necessarily technically believe this, but the way I maneuver life and experience life communicates this information to me, which is like we all have many different paths, like, in front of.

of us that we could go in. Right. It's like this is maybe a combination of free will and predestination is like every spirit has rooms full of doors that they walk into. And behind every door is a hallway full of doors. And if you, like, it would be like the fractal system of paths available to each individual. Right. And I feel, I can feel when I'm on the golden one.

Like, it's not the only thing that could have happened. Right. And it's not, and it didn't have to happen, and it wasn't guaranteed. I had to make strategic decisions to choose that door. And it wasn't always the door that was calling to me at the moment or the sexiest door or, you know, whatever. But that I can feel it when I'm like, nope, even though this is hard, this is the golden path. This is the golden fractal sequence. This is where I'm supposed to be.

in the version of myself that I most want to be. Like, this is maybe ridiculous to say, but sometimes I feel like there are, there's like this really lonely, grumpy workaholic in my brain that is a character that I could have been. And she's fabulous. I have so much love for her.

She, like, she thinks so much. She just works all the time, and she makes as much money. is possible and she's totally alone and by herself and she's in control of everything in her life and she like like sits in her apartment at night in total silence while she looks out the window at like the ocean crashing on the beach because of course she lives at the beach because why wouldn't she she can and like and that's a path that I feel like I could have walked down you know and there's there are other ones that are less entertaining to describe and I I'm I feel I can see the options that my spirit could

through in life and I can feel when I'm choosing not necessarily, like not necessarily the most fun or the one I, like the darkest or whatever, but the path that I most want to be on. And there are moments where I feel that happened. And like one of them was when I did, my husband and I decided to get a place in upstate New York and we toured this house and we were like, we live here. Like, and this, this is the right path for us. We need to spend more time in nature.

We need to be here. We need to be in this house together and we felt it like lock in. and it was in our price range, and it was like, yes. And that's like a moment where I've been like, yes, okay, this is where we need to be. You have a strong intuition, and that is a gift. Last question. One, two, or three. Can I say you choose?

Yeah, you can say that. A little dealer's choice. Okay, you choose. Yeah, dealer's choice. It's a new rule. They're all so good. I'm asking this one. You know why?

because I've never asked it of anyone. Amazing. And it feels kind of silly, but it's not. It can go to interesting places. So here we go, Maya Hark. Yeah. Do you believe in ghosts? Oh, wow.

Amazing. I really thought that you were about to say God, and I was going to go skip. Ah! It didn't say that. I know. Do you believe in spirits? I don't believe in, I don't believe in, like, dead people, retaining agency over their consciousness in a consistent way where they are able to haunt.

I love you so much for taking this intellectually seriously, this question. Thank you. Okay. Keep going. I don't believe in hauntings. Okay. I do believe in magic very distinctly. And I once had an experience that I felt was a magical experience connected to someone who had passed. But it wasn't ghosty. It was like talking about someone, and then the moon reflected against the curtains in a very specific way that was the way that they used to talk about the moon. And it felt like, oh, hi. Yeah. And.

But I think we can use, I think we can define ghosts, I will anyway, very broadly. Very broadly. It's presence, its energy, it's moonlight on a curtain. Yeah, and I believe that people, I believe that conscious, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, and that whatever, and I believe in the soul, and I believe that there's a euness that is absolutely you that has nothing to do with your physical body and that one day when you will die, you will graduate and that energy will go somewhere. And I don't know where, but I believe in that. Yeah. And so, and in a way that's a ghost. Yeah, that was lovely.

Thank you. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the memory time machine, Maya, you revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you'd change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose? Wow, it's so funny. It's funny to sit with it, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God, it really is such a reflection on, like, the more work I'm, I need to do in therapy because, like, some part of me is, like, I would go back. And because I was so young when my parents split up, I would go back and feel that again. Feel the togetherness again? Yeah. And, like, because I barely remember, and I would go back to clarify the memory or something.

But I'm trying to graduate from that parent-trap level of therapy. which I do believe is level one. And I've been in therapy for like eight years. So in my effort to try to graduate into level two of therapy, I would say that I would really want to go back to a moment on little women. Just to even go back in our conversation, I would go back and feel, I had this night, we were at the Royal Marine Hotel in Dunleary, Ireland.

and they had a pool in the basement that was so beautiful. It was like 1980s glamour. It hadn't been refurbished in a really long time, but when it was built, it was like the best they could do. You know what I mean? And I was down there in the water with now one of my best friends in the whole world, Willa Fitzgerald, who's an amazing actress, and we were having an argument about acting.

And I was, she's a little older than me, and I was fresh out of drama school. and I was so pretentious. I was so pretentious and so moralistic and so sure about everything I was saying. And my belief in the craft and in myself and my ability to do it was so intense. And I would love to go back and feel that feeling again. I would love for a second of a reminder of the belief in myself I had at 19. and try to have, to try to bottle it and bring a little bit of it back to me at 27, 28.

Because that belief got me to where I am now. And I'm going to need some to get me where I want to go. And so I want to remember that feeling. Maya Hawk, you can hear her on her new album. It is called My Trey-Corso. Maya Hawk. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you so much. I love talking to you and I love your cards and thank you, thank you, thank you. And I didn't skip. You didn't skip. A plus. I didn't skip. I took them all. A plus.

I knew it. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you like this conversation, I would recommend going back and watching my interview with Jeanette McCurdy. Jeanette just has this enthusiasm for writing and reinventing herself that I think matches Maya Hawks energy in a lot of ways. Check it out. This episode was produced by Alicia Jang and Lee Han. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown.

Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.