Maya Hawke is no stranger to divorce. The 25-year-old actress is the daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke who split in the spotlight. Their tumultuous divorce took years to finalize, and their custody agreement left a 7-year-old Maya scrambling for ways to connect with people outside of her family. More recently, it left her considering starting a “revenge family.”
In a new episode of The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast, Maya read a Modern Love essay — “Our Kinder, Gentler, Nobody-Moves-Out Divorce,” by Jordana Jacobs — before talking about her own experience with divorce. The touching and intimate piece details Jacobs’ experience of still living under one roof with her ex-husband for the sake of their son.
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Though much more pronounced, it felt reminiscent of Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce’s childhood — with their parents supposedly staying together because of the boys and because of logistics.
This, of course, is not how things played out for the Thurman-Hawke family. When Maya finished reading Jacobs’ essay, host Anna Martin asked if that would have been the “dream situation” for her — her parents splitting emotionally but not geographically.
Maya was quick with her response.
“I think the dream situation is captured by the film [The] Parent Trap,” she said.
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“Secret twin,” Martin responded.
“Yeah, secret twin, get your parents back together,” Maya said. “But I think this would have been a pretty good secondary dream. I mean, I remember so many hard days and fights about packing your bag, and you forgot this medicine, and you have to go back and get it, and Sunday goodbyes.”
And then, she said, a whole day — a “transition day” — would be “gone” because everyone was in a state of “strife.”
She recounted a conversation with her dad where she said she wanted to go to a party with friends but the Dead Poets Society actor pushed back because this was their “special time” together.
“And I was like, ‘Every weekend can’t be special,'” she said. “‘They’re all my weekends. And you get every other one, and my mom gets every other one.”
“‘And I know that that’s hard,'” the Stranger Things star continued. “‘But that makes it so that every one of my weekends is special family time, and I need to build my friendships.'”
As for Jacobs and her ex’s approach? Maya said that seemed like a “better” and “less possessive” way of going about divorce. It seems, to Maya, that this would allow the child to have “more consistency and normalcy.” Even if it did come with the cringe-worthy experience of running into your ex’s new partner in the hallway.
Maya continued to open up to Martin, saying that in her late teens and early 20s, she was fixated on the idea of finding a partner, getting married, and having kids ASAP. Once that happened, she could host holidays at her house and everyone would be invited. She and her family would be the “home base.”
“‘I’m going to take control over the concept of family by building my own and letting people meet me on my terms,'” she had thought.
But during the pandemic — when she moved back home and was going back and forth between Uma and Ethan’s homes once again — she had time to reset, reconsider, and recalibrate. She realized she didn’t need a “revenge family.” “I need to build a relationship to myself where I can be my own parent and where I don’t need reinforcements outside of myself. I need to reinforce myself. I’m very glad I don’t have a revenge family.”
Very glad she doesn’t have a revenge family but still pining (even if jokingly) for a secret twin. And based on the constant drama the singer described, we can’t say we blame her.
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