In an interview on the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast last week, Ethan Hawke’s daughter Maya Hawke revealed that she knows several directors who have been told by producers that they must cast actors with a certain amount of Instagram followers in order for a project to move forward:
“I’m talking about deleting my Instagram and [some directors are] 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 from the cast. So if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.’”
Ethan Hawke has now weighed in on his daughter’s reveal, and confirmed that he’s come across this phenomenon too. Like the rest of us, he also thinks it’s incredibly lame:
“I really feel for these people. It’s really hard. Sometimes I’ll be setting a movie up and someone will say, ‘Oh, you should cast Suzie.’ I’m like, ‘Who is she?’ ‘She has 10 million followers.’ I’m like, ‘OK cool, has she acted before?’ ‘No, but…’ And you’re like, ‘Wow, so this is going to help me get the movie made? This is crazy.’”
Hawke continued:
“So if I don’t have this public-facing [platform], I don’t have a career? And if I get more followers I might get that part? What?”
Hawke went on to say that he meets “so many young actors that think being an actor is protein shakes and going to the gym.”
“I wish they could meet Phil Hoffman like I did when I was 18, because it’s a much more substantive and enjoyable life. I mean, go to the gym if you want to, but that doesn’t make you — Robert De Niro is not great because he has a six-pack. If the part calls for it, he’ll do it, and that’s awesome. But he’s so much more than that.”
Now, these complaints may sound weird coming Ethan and Maya Hawke given she’s arguably only famous because of him, but I think we’d all much rather have nepo babies with talent than Instagram influencers who only got the job because the producer wants them to promote it to their millions of followers. Can’t they pay them to do that without sticking them in the film too?
Unfortunately, that’s the year 2025 for you. No following, no career. What a sad state of affairs!
For the time Sydney Sweeney hit back at a Hollywood producer who said she’s ‘not pretty’ and ‘can’t act’, click HERE. The audacity!
