Hawke, the Gen Z daughter of iconic Gen X actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, explained how portraying Anxiety fundamentally shifted her relationship with her own anxious thoughts. “I think with like the joy-anxiety relationship, it taught me a lot about showing love to that part of myself,” Hawke said. “And that is all actually a way to calm it down: inviting it into the conversation.”
Hawke said the biggest thing she learned from making the film was “to give my anxiety a comfy chair.”
Poehler agreed with Hawke’s assessment about anxiety’s prevalence in contemporary life. “Everybody is so stressed,” Poehler said on the podcast.
“I mean, anxiety might be the defining emotion of our time,” Hawke replied.
Hawke told Poehler that playing Anxiety has been meaningful because of the responses she has received from audiences.
“I’ve had so many people feel so seen by it and, like, little kids feel so seen by it—and it helped them understand their brain better,” she said.
She added she doesn’t mind when fans ask her to perform the Anxiety voice, even for personal messages to children struggling with difficult situations.
“I’ll get a call from a parent,” Hawke said. “And be like, ‘Hey, would you do a recording, my kid’s going through this hard time, would you record something in the voice for my kid?’ And I’ll be like, ‘sure!’”
During the podcast, Hawke and Poehler also discussed the importance of making space for both joy and anxiety during challenging times. “You’re not helping anybody if you shut out joy completely,” Hawke said.
You can watch the full conversation with Maya Hawke and Amy Poehler below.
