SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. When Maya Hawke is not busy acting in everything from "Stranger Things" to "Inside Out 2," she is making music. She recently put out her fourth studio album, "Maitreya Corso." She says releasing a new album is always intimidating.
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MAYA HAWKE: I think of releases almost more as funerals than birthdays because it's not yours anymore. It's now going to become its whole own thing. And right away, it just feels like this profound moment of misunderstanding. Like, you took your clothes off in the lunchroom, and everyone's looking at you, and they see something totally different than who you are.
DETROW: On Wild Card, Maya Hawke spoke with host Rachel Martin about an important lesson that she has learned about herself.
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RACHEL MARTIN: What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?
HAWKE: I needed to unlearn that I was crazy (laughter), which I...
MARTIN: Say more.
HAWKE: Like, I was a precocious young person. I wanted to be an adult.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: And I did a lot of adult stuff before a lot of my friends and before - and, like, was in, like, adult relationships before a lot of my friends were and messing up in adult relationships and making...
MARTIN: What do you mean? Say what you mean. Like, friendships with grown-ups or romantic relationships that were at an adult level?
HAWKE: No, I mean romantic relationships with adults (laughter). Like, I mean...
MARTIN: Oh. You were young, and you had romantic relationships with people who were older.
HAWKE: Older than me. Yeah. And then - but then also - but also with my friends, like, that also made me seem older 'cause I was in this adult relationship. And then I would - so I really had kind of an idea about myself that I was like, I'm Crazy Maya. Crazy Maya's always going through a hard breakup or has a new big crush and is madly obsessed with this person or wants to make a big change and move and wants to, like - I had this kind of idea that I was crazy because I was spending a lot of time with people older than me...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: ...And behaving like a young person and - who was figuring things out and making mistakes and learning a lot. And that made me kind of seem like wild and older to my younger friends. And I had a lot of older people being like, you need to grow up. Like, you know - and it's always funny. It's like, when you're an older person dating a younger person telling them to grow up, like, one of those two people needs to grow up, and it's probably not the younger person...
MARTIN: That's right. That's right.
HAWKE: ...You know? But I felt myself making excuses to people all the time for the way that I was acting and just being like, kind of starting to embrace the, like, I know I'm crazy, but - and I had to realize you were not crazy.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: You were young...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: ...And, like, with adult freedom and adult responsibility...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: ...Just figuring it out and trying stuff. And I'm so proud of all the things I tried and learned about and so happy because I love all the information that I gained and all...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HAWKE: ...The wisdom I have with which to maneuver my life right now. And I love my life right now. And it's, like, not crazy at all. It's, like, pretty ordinary. And I was - anyway, so I had to unlearn that.
DETROW: You can watch a longer version of that conversation on YouTube or the NPR app by searching for NPR Wild Card. Maya Hawke's latest album, "Maitreya Corso," is out now. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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