Maya Hawke comes from an exceptionally good gene pool with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke as her parents.

Yet, she still got criticism for how she looked and was told by a Hollywood producer on a film she worked on what she needed to do to be ‘prettier.’ 

The Stranger Things star, 26, was informed told that she would look better with her mouth shut, she revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week.

‘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.’ 

She went on to talk about how that messed with her mind and her plan for the character she was playing.

Maya Hawke comes from an exceptionally good gene pool with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke as her parents. Seen here in 2021

Her mother is Uma Thurman, seen here at the Michael Kors Collection Fall/Winter 2025 Runway Show at Terminal Warehouse on February 11 in New York City

‘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,’ she explained.

‘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.’ 

Read More Maya Hawke gives major update on Stranger Things season five

The podcast’s host Josh Horowitz asked Maya if she told the producer off when he said that.

She cheekily replied: ‘I mean, you’ve talked to me for 30 minutes. What do you think?’

Maya did not reveal who the producer was or what project she was working on when the incident happened.

However, in addition to Stranger Things, the nepo baby has voiced Anxiety in Inside Out as well as appeared in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, among others.

Another disturbing thing she’s been told by filmmakers is that they sometimes choose who to cast based on how many Instagram followers they have.

She said she was told, ‘Just so you know, when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get [from] the cast that I cast. 

Yet, she still got criticism for how she looked and was told by a producer on a film she worked on what she needed to do to be ‘prettier.’ Seen here in 2021

The Stranger Things star, 26, was told that she would look prettier with her mouth shut, she revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week. Seen here in 2023

‘So if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand that these are the kinds of people that I have to cast.’

‘It’s a really confusing line to walk,’ she acknowledged, admitting that she’s been talked out of deleting her social media accounts as a result.

Maya joined Stranger Things in 2019 and will return as her character Robin Buckley for the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2022’s season four.

She said the cast worked on filming season five for a full year.

‘We’re making, basically, eight movies. The episodes are very long,’ she said on the Podcrushed podcast of the eight episodes that will make up the upcoming season.

Hawke continued about the process of creating the show, ‘They are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season and a long time to shoot them.’ 

Last summer, Hawke also weighed in on how she feels about being called a nepo baby. 

In an interview with The Times, published in June, Hawke confessed that she’s comfortable being lumped in with other kids of Hollywood stars who are beneficiaries of nepotism.

She went on to talk about how that messed with her mind and her plan for the character she was playing. Seen here in 2025

She added, ‘I saw two paths when I was first starting, and one of them was: change your name, get a nose job and go to open casting roles.’

The rising actress and singer declared, ‘It’s okay to be made fun of when you’re in rarefied air. It’s a lucky place to be.

‘My relationships with my parents are really honest and positive, and that supersedes anything anyone can say about it.’