Ethan Hawke may be Maya Hawke’s dad, but he treated her like the professional she is on the set of “Wildcat”.
Ethan chatted to ET Canada’s Carlos Bustamante’s ahead of Monday’s TIFF premiere of the movie, which Ethan directed and Maya starred in.
The actor is also in town as part of the Audi Innovation Series — which is a homegrown Canadian series featuring visionaries and trendsetters who embody excellence and innovation, selected for their talent and passion for creative change — with him being featured as a speaker this year.
Previous featured guests have included Tommy Hilfiger, Jared Leto, Chris Hadfield and Spike Lee.
READ MORE: Ethan Hawke Says He Thinks About How Toronto Audiences Will React When Making A Movie
During his ET Canada chat, Ethan spoke about working with Maya, insisting he didn’t have time to be a proud dad on set because it was a busy, working environment.
As we questioned whether he had his “director hat” on or was gushing over his talented daughter the whole time, Ethan insisted he had to pick the first one.
“The blessing is getting to be a grown-up with her and getting to meet on a professional stage and work together.”
Ethan shared, “I mean, we’re very aware that we had a lot of unbelievable professionals around us. You know, we’re on set with Laura Linney. We’re on set with Steve Cousins, who is a brilliant cinematographer. The way that he thinks about the language of film is exciting and powerful.
“And then you have all these amazing producers that are investing a ton of money and time and securing this location. I’m not sitting there going, ‘My daughter’s so cute.’ You know, I mean, I love my daughter and I think that way at Thanksgiving, you know, or when she comes over for dinner to play the guitar or something like that.
“But the blessing is getting to be a grown-up with her and getting to meet on a professional stage and work together. I mean, I would be failing her if I [sit] there and go, ‘Gosh, I love my daughter.’ No, no, no, we were there to work and I wanted to give her an experience that was worthy of her and worthy of her best work.”
Ethan said not much surprised him when it came to how amazing Maya was on set, insisting: “Nothing surprised me… There’s not very many people in this world that I know well. But that kid I know well. So did it surprise me that she worked so hard? No, it did not.
“Did it surprise me that she was, you know, learning her lines and working on her character for months beforehand? No, it didn’t. I expected that. I see the way she approaches her music. I see the way she approaches her career.
“She’s a passionate young artisan, and she wasn’t there for us to have a cute, fun experience. She was there to try to make a meaningful, substantive movie about the life of Flannery O’Connor. So we had a lot of work to do every day,” he added of the character she plays in the flick.
The movie “follows the life of writer O’Connor while she was struggling to publish her first novel.”
See what Maya had to say about working with her dad in her ET Canada TIFF chat below.
