Maya Hawke had a strange year.
The 28-year-old star, who broke out with her role as Robin Buckley on "Stranger Things," has been adjusting to a monumental life change: For the first time since she was in her early 20s, she does not have a new season of the Netflix series on the horizon. The hit sci-fi show concluded in 2025, and for Hawke, moving on wasn't easy.
"Three months before the show ended, and then three months after it came out, that little over a year was one of the most confusing times of my life," she says. "I think probably how a lot of people feel graduating college, just sort of like, 'Oh, wow. I didn't realize what a gravitational force this was in my life, and how grounding it was, and how scary it is to be out here in the world
so untethered.' And separating from the family that was built on that show. So it was totally hard and confusing."
It's been almost a year since the "Stranger Things" finale, so Hawke, who has a supporting role in the newest "Hunger Games" movie "Sunrise on the Reaping" (in theaters Nov. 20), has had time to adjust. She's "feeling good now" but acknowledges the transition was anxiety-inducing.
"There's so much fear that getting kicked out of the nest indicates," she says.
"Sunrise on the Reaping" marks one of Hawke's first post-"Stranger Things" roles. Set 24 years before the events of the original movie, the prequel film centers on a young Haymitch Abernathy, originally played by Woody Harrelson and now portrayed by Joseph Zada. When Haymitch is forced to participate in the 50th annual Hunger Games, the winner of the previous year's fight to the death, Wiress (Hawke), serves as one of his mentors.
Like many people her age, "The Hunger Games" was formative for Hawke, who remembers reading the young adult novels on a family vacation as a "melancholy" teen.
"I was living in my sadness, in that teenage way," she recalls. "It was raining at night, and I pretended to go to sleep, and then I snuck out of my room just so I could sit outside in the rain and read my 'Hunger Games.' The books held a really special place in my heart. I think it was the first action-adventure, fantasy female lead I'd ever read, and now I'm addicted to that. It just grabbed me by the throat."
The movies, too, had a big impact. Even though her mom, Uma Thurman, is famous for kicking butt as The Bride in "Kill Bill," Hawke was "never a big action fan as a kid" until Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss came along.
"When I saw these movies, everything changed, and I realized it's not the genre, it's the way the actor lives inside the genre," she says. "What Jennifer Lawrence, in particular, did with that performance, how earthy and grounded and human and strong it was. I didn't know it was possible."
Amanda Plummer played the older version of Wiress in 2013's "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," which depicted her as mentally unwell and heavily traumatized by events that occur in "Sunrise on the Reaping." Hawke was inspired by the way Plummer made her mark, despite having relatively little screen time.
"It's the main thing I remembered from 'Catching Fire,' " Hawke says. "Then I went back and watched it when I got this part. … I was like, wow, actually, the screen time does not compare to the impression. That was really inspiring to me about what's possible. Not that I achieved it, but I was inspired to try to make an impression like that."
Hawke was also honored to join a franchise she views as a piece of "anti-fascist popular art," a quality of "The Hunger Games" that has "always meant a lot" to her." But she tried not to think too hard about the pressures of joining a beloved series and tuned out online chatter about the movie.
"I try to isolate myself as much as possible," she says. "The people having the discourse don't really imagine that we're seeing it. When you meet someone on the street, they're like, 'Oh, my God, you're amazing! You're wonderful!' You could see the same person on the internet say, 'You're horrible, and you're the worst.' Probably what they say to your face is what they want you to hear. So I try to do them the courtesy of not listening into the door."
For Hawke, settling into life after "Stranger Things" has been something of a reset.
"I had to go back and remember who I was before I started ['Stranger Things'], and take some stuff from [Robin], and then some lessons that I learned along the way, and rebuild my ethos and attitude about acting," she says.
Going forward, she wants to choose roles because they speak to her, not because they would help her career.
"What's really important to me is that it calls to my spirit – that whatever I'm doing, I'm not doing it because it's a good idea or strategically smart, or because so and so told me to do it, or because, 'Well, you have to do that to be able to do that,' " she says. "Trying to get out of the industry mindset and back into the core actor heart, and to just do what you want to do, do what calls to you, do what makes you feel something. That's really the fire I'm stoking."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maya Hawke found life 'hard and confusing' after 'Stranger Things'
