Maya Hawke appeared on the latest episode of “Happy Sad Confused” and says a famous Hollywood talent once called her out for leaving her mouth open too much during takes. The “Stranger Things” favorite was advised that she would look prettier with our mouth shut.
“A director told me — actually, I think it was a producer, but they were in cahoots — told me I looked prettier with my mouth closed and that I should close my mouth after I speak more often,” Hawke revealed. “I do often let my mouth hang open depending on what character I’m playing, because I feel like jaw tension and mouth tension is so important to express what kind of person you are.”
“Where you leave that, I think, is really important,” she continued. “And I was really upset about being told that I should close my mouth more to look prettier, because I was playing a character that was distinctly unselfconscious. That was a trait of the character — that they didn’t care about looking pretty and they were unselfconscious — and so it was clearly just a desire of the aesthetic of the thing, and I was annoyed about it.”
When “Happy Sad Confused” host Josh Horowitz asked if Hawke made her displeasure over the comment known publicly at the time, she responded: “I mean, you’ve talked to me for 30 minutes,” she replied, “What do you think?”
Hawke did not reveal the director or producer who made the comment. Outside of her work on “Stranger Things,” which she will return to for its final season later this year, Hawke is best known for voicing Anxiety in last year’s Pixar blockbuster “Inside Out 2” and appearing in Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” among other titles.
Watch Hawke’s full interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in the video below.
