Maya Hawke’s Guide to Joining a Global Fandom (Again)

It’s Maya Hawke’s day off. But you wouldn’t know it based on what she’s done so far: a few hours of making flash cards for an upcoming project followed by a full slate of meetings, one per hour. Now we’re at dinner in New York City, talking about her role as the brilliant, unconventional victor Wiress in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.Stepping into a beloved pop culture franchise is nothing new for the 28-year-old multi-hyphenate (she played both the smart, sarcastic Robin Buckley in Stranger Things and the voice of the perpetually frazzled Anxiety in Inside Out 2). Neither is existing in a curious state of constant motion. In the past year alone, Maya has released a folk-pop album, Maitreya Corso; filmed and appeared in multiple TV and film projects; served as a Prada brand ambassador; and gotten married to singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson.Yet beneath the impressive velocity, Maya is interested in all the quiet she can get. “I’m working on being a little less busy,” she says. “Doing half as much twice as well is my current goal.” For now, she’s still able to wander museums and walk through New York without the celebrity disguise of sunglasses and a baseball hat. She’s soaking it in because she knows that come this winter, she’ll be under an arena-size spotlight thanks to Sunrise on the Reaping—and that for her, everything might be about to change.Sunrise on the Reaping is obviously not your first time joining an existing fandom. Do you feel pressure to satisfy built-in audiences, or do you tune it out?I am the great joiner! On Stranger Things, I was joining a cast that had done the first two seasons. That held a different kind of weight. With this film, everyone had this newness to them. We are all in it together and will sink or swim as a team. There’s something relaxing about that.The casting is so impressive. Everyone really looks like a younger version of their Hunger Games characters. Elle Fanning very clearly studied what Elizabeth Banks did as Effie Trinket in the earlier movies. Did you do the same with Amanda Plummer, who played the original Wiress? Elle’s Effie is amazing. People are going to lose their minds. I was like, Whoa, that’s how you step on set! I had a different amount to work with. Amanda has three minutes total screen time as Wiress, and what we’ve seen of her character is someone who has been transformed by the events that unfold in Sunrise. We don’t know what she was like before that trauma happened.Richard KernTop Fruity Booty, skirt Blumarine, shirt (worn around waist) WNU. How did you fill those gaps during your character study? I read the book a bunch of times. I rewatched the movies. I was deep in the script. Wiress was not a bright-eyed Capitol kid. She’s a tribute fresh off her win, which she accomplished in a really unusual way. She didn’t hurt anybody. Someone who wins the Games without betraying their moral compass is an extremely special person.What do you think The Hunger Games as a series understands about people and power that keeps it feeling relevant? How much power corrupts. It’s not the person in power; it’s what power does to the person. That’s a very clear thesis that runs through the whole story. To make something that is both popular and anti-fascist is pretty crazy. What the books and films are doing is like protest art in a pretty explicit way.The song “Lioness” on your new album1 compares starring in a pop culture phenomenon to being on a roller coaster with millions of people watching. I can get really nervous when I realize how much attention is on something like this. If I start looking at whether people are happy about the casting and the discourse that follows, it’s like the Eye of Sauron. I’m working on caring less about that.1. Maya’s cowriting contributions are also featured on Phoebe Bridgers’s latest album, Lost Weekend.Well, I have looked in the comments sections, and fans seem very pleased by your involvement. That makes me very happy.Speaking of acting and “Lioness,” the song also references your Stranger Things costar Sadie Sink and how she has influenced the way you think about your own work.The scene when she comes out of her coma—the whole crew got quiet; you could hear a pin drop. When nobody breathes, everyone knows that magic is happening. It grounded me to earth like a big tree. It woke me up. Like a little arrow saying, “Go that way.” And I’ve been following it ever since.You’ve had a lot of opportunities to find that feeling lately. In addition to Sunrise on the Reaping, your romantic comedy One Night Only came out this summer, you’re currently filming the thriller The God of the Woods, and you have the romantic fantasy Wishful Thinking in early 2027. Plus your music and then there’s fashion. How do you identify with it all?In the beginning of my career, when I was balancing fashion and acting, I had a boyfriend once call me an “AMW”—an actress, model, whatever. The “whatever” was so charged. I had some embarrassment around it. And I wanted to be like, “I’m not a model.” But I didn’t like “actress.”You’re an artist who is also a Prada girl. That’s some killer armor. When I go to Milan to work with Mrs. Prada and Raf Simons, I consistently feel good about myself. Even my husband pointed it out. I was recently auditioning for a project where the character needed to be really confident and he was like, “Be who you are when we go to Milan.”The premise of your movie One Night Only is that by law, everyone gets only one night to figure out love. Do you think modern dating would be easier if people had that kind of deadline?I filmed Hunger Games and One Night Only back-to-back. They each have these two sorts of apocalyptic fascist governments. My joke on the set of Hunger Games was like, “Beetee,2 we have to have sex right now. We’ve got two hours—let’s go!” Government control in your bed? Horrible. The idea of taking it to that degree is just repellent. I want to be able to explore love on my terms. Bedtime TV, sex, kissing, and love. I mean, who would I be without these things? It would be punishment and torture.2. Beetee Latier, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr., is an inventor and fellow former victor from District 3 who returns to the arena with Wiress for the Third Quarter Quell. Jeffrey Wright originally portrayed the character.Do you consider yourself a romantic?I consider myself a hopeless romantic. The closest we get to magic is what can happen between two people. Until I actually fell in love with my husband, I was falling in love all the time. I fall in love with my friends every day. I love them very romantically, like how can we spend Christmas together romantically and familially? My biggest heartbreaks of my life have been friendships ending.Honestly, same. It hits different because when you fall in love in a romantic way with someone, some part of you understands that there is a chance that it might expire. There are a lot of things that have to go right for it to work. But with a friendship, you don’t go in with that armor up. You go in so vulnerable, and when it doesn’t work, it’s the biggest tears I’ve ever shed. I hesitate to say this because it’s embarrassing, but I talk about my biggest friendship heartbreak from high school at least monthly, probably weekly. It was really formative.Richard KernSweater and shoes Prada, briefs, socks, and accessories stylist’s own. You got married on Valentine’s Day. So many celebrities place their wedding photos in the press, but you didn’t. Why not?I’m not going to lie and be like, “I never for one second considered it.” I genuinely thought about it. But the only thing I’ve known that I wanted to do on my wedding day since I was a kid was walk with the whole wedding party.The February weather was on your side, and there was only one lone paparazzo who captured that procession. And they were, to their credit, extremely noninvasive. No one saw them. No one was upset by it. No one got hurt. I was kind of happy that those photographs ran in People because I had thought about doing a story about the dress. I worked with Prada, so it felt like a way to honor them without having to go out in public and say, “Look at me.”For people attached to projects as big as Stranger Things and now The Hunger Games, there’s usually a long-lasting tension between performing publicly and having a private self. How are you processing this? I am not egomaniacal enough to think I will ever not be in my post–Stranger Things era. It will always be a beautiful shadow of my life. I will still consider myself to be in the aftermath of these experiences.You will be called to show up to Comic Con for time eternal.Exactly. I will sign posters until the day I die. Happily so.Read All of The Hunger Games Cover StoriesLead image: Dress Prada. Cover: Dress Prada, bra stylist’s own.Styled by Chloe Grace Press. Hair by Peter Butler for Oribe. Makeup by Benjamin Puckey at The Wall Group. Manicure by Honey for Manucurist Paris. Set design by Elaine Winter. Produced by No Inc.