While it’s more common for parents to embarrass their kids, whether they be actual children, teenagers, or adults, there are moments when a parent does something that is seemingly cool to their kids. Nearly everyone has been there at some point. Maybe your parent told a joke that gets all your friends to laugh, maybe they actually quoted a meme correctly, or maybe they shamelessly flirted with Rihanna at a basketball game. Well, okay, maybe the last one isn’t that common. But it is true for Maya Hawke, the talented actress/singer of Academy Award Nominee parents Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.
In a shared video from Variety, the father-daughter acting duo joke about the time Ethan was caught “openly flirting” with Rihanna at a basketball game while sitting courtside. The younger Hawke quickly corrects her father, saying he was caught “openly trying” to flirt with Rihanna — leading us to assume that his flirtations were unsuccessful. Like any great father, Ethan accepts his daughter’s correction, laughing and joking that about the moment. He goes on to say:
And so that’s been to the family’s shame. So, you’re really touching a nerve.
Maya doesn’t let her father beat himself up over it, though, immediately swooping in to shake off any embarrassment the incident may have caused him. Instead, she reassures him that the moment isn’t shameful, saying instead:
No, it’s a family pride.
It’s a heartwarming and hilarious moment between the father-daughter duo that has many people on X (formally known as Twitter) reliving and laughing about the iconic moment. And while the story is hilarious, it’s actually even funnier when one remembers that Hawke was at the game with his then-13-year-old son (and Maya’s brother). Pictures shared on Ethan’s Instagram show that his son was originally sitting next to Rihanna, the two clearly swapped seats during the game so Ethan could, in Maya’s words, “openly try to” flirt with the Grammy winning artist.
Ethan may not have won Dad of the Year in 2015 for the hilarious incident, but he’s certainly in the running this year. The award-winning actor has just finished directing his daughter in their new film Wildcat , a movie that Maya brought to her father’s production company because she felt he was the best fit to help her bring the story to life. The indie movie, which has signed a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement allowing the two to do press, is a biopic about American novelist Flannery O’Connor and her struggles to get her first novel published.
Maya stars in the movie as O’Connor, while her father directed and co-wrote the script with Shelby Gaines. Not only is she the film’s main character, but the younger Hawke also plays six other characters, all of whom appear in O’Connor’s short stories.
Wildcat premiered on September 1st at the Telluride Film Festival and is scheduled to screen at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival later this month. Unfortunately, for those of us who aren’t attending the film festival, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to watch the biopic. Wildcat currently doesn’t have a public release date, but keep an eye out on the 2023 Movie Release Schedule for any updates.