The link between “working actor” and “mandatory celebrity” has always been an inextricable part of the entertainment industry—but rarely has it been so easy to numerically quantify. That’s per performer Maya Hawke, who opened up in a recent interview about producers’ increasingly stringent requirements when it comes to metrics like social media followers for their casts.
Hawke was talking to Happy Sad Confused‘s Josh Horowitz about the often uncomfortable need for performers to also be social media celebrities, with directors having told her that deleting accounts might literally affect which parts she might be offered—or which parts can be given to others. “They’re like, ‘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 of the cast that I cast so if you delete your Instagram, and I lose those followers, understand that these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.’” Which suggests a particularly weird kind of popularity algebra happening in Hollywood offices, where directors and casting teams are forced to ask themselves how much talent or chemistry is required to overcome, say, a deficit of hearts on TikTok. Hawke stresses that the situation is “complicated” but also makes it clear the follower count counting is a genuine thing that can affect who gets cast in films.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hawke (who also talked about her work on Inside Out 2, Stranger Things, and other major projects) once again addressed the nepotism elephant in the room, pushing back gently on an idea occasionally floated by her fellow children of very famous actors that it is, in some ways, “harder” to have to defeat those expectations. “I definitely wouldn’t say it’s harder. It is easier,” she stressed, of getting started in acting when your parents are well-known stars like Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. “I have so many friends… who didn’t have the luxury to come from where I came from, and it is harder.” She also emphasized that all you can really do with said privilege is to look out for fellow performers, noting that she feels a responsibility to “try to share the luck that you have.” (And, presumably, some of her 9 million Instagram followers.)
[via THR]
