Ethan and Maya Hawke on Flannery O'Connor, ambition and the writer's controversial legacy

Biopics about famous people are usually chronological, following a sequence of important life-changing events that ultimately lead to the subject's death. But that's not the case for director Ethan Hawke's new film, Wildcat, which stars his daughter Maya as the American literary icon Flannery O'Connor.

Rather than following a simple timeline of events, the film flips back and forth between O'Connor's life in Georgia as she struggles to publish her first novel, and dramatizations of some of her short stories, such as Everything That Rises Must Converge and Good Country People.

Both Hawkes became fans of O'Connor at a young age, connecting over the Southern writer's work after Maya first learned of her in high school. As a devout Catholic, O'Connor struggled to square her faith with her ambition as a writer, which Maya says was something she started thinking deeply about herself as a burgeoning actor and musician.

"I was really struck by this idea that the biggest thing standing between you and your full potential is an overwhelming desire to reach it," Maya tells Q's Tom Power in an interview alongside her father. "I wanted a lot of attention, but I also knew that that desire for attention was the thing that was kind of preventing me from doing deep work."

"You had a healthy suspicion of your desire to be fabulous," Ethan adds. "[Flannery] had grand ambitions and this other part of her that was extremely gentle and understood that humility was the key to the universe…. I think that you related to that because you had a lot you wanted to say, and you were naturally suspicious of it. I think that women in general are often told that ambition is kind of ugly, whereas young men are not told that as loudly."

She seeped into my skin and I tried not to tidy her up. I tried not to tidy up reality.- Maya Hawke

When Maya first approached her father with the idea of making a movie about O'Connor, she expressed interest in depicting the writer warts and all.

"I tried to make her unpleasant to be around," Maya says of her performance in Wildcat. "All of her writing — her letters, her stories — reverberate through her body. It was physical discomfort. It was emotional discomfort. It was loneliness…. She seeped into my skin and I tried not to tidy her up. I tried not to tidy up reality."

O'Connor had a controversial legacy, particularly surrounding her bigoted views and use of racist language in personal correspondence. The Hawkes discussed whether or not they should make the film at all, but ultimately decided that trying to reconcile racism in our collective past was a conversation worth having.

"You can't look at the history of America at all without stumbling on her great sins and wounds and crimes," Ethan says. "I started to feel about Flannery the way I feel about America, which is that it's a racist country and [Flannery] was a racist in recovery. She saw it more insightfully than most any people of her time.

"She didn't write about what it was like to be oppressed. She wrote about what it was like to be a racist white woman, and she wrote about it very beautifully, if that's possible. I know there's some people that would believe that this person should not be talked about in this way, but I feel like whenever we're having a conversation, we're winning."

The full interview with Ethan and Maya Hawke is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Ethan and Maya Hawke produced by Matt Murphy.