Maya Hawke: my biggest heartbreaks of my life have been friendships ending

Maya Hawke on the cover of Cosmo and at the Stranger Things 5 premiere in November, 2025
Maya Hawke is one of three cover stars for the upcoming online issue of Cosmopolitan. The other two covers are of her The Hunger Games: Sunrise on The Reaping co-stars McKenna Grace and Whitney Peak. The editorial fashion is under-dressed and too casual for my taste. There’s a lot of tank tops, leotards and underwear. I get that things are hard for magazines and they need to generate interest, but I want to see amazing fashion, not loungewear. I’m not likely the target market anyway.

I’ve been a fan of Maya’s since seeing her on season three of Stranger Things. There’s something genuine and likable about her. She may be a nepo baby, but she can act, and she’s also a musician, having released three albums. I enjoyed her interview with Cosmo and appreciated how open and vulnerable she was. Here’s some of what she told Cosmo, with more at the source:

On the rollercoaster of fame
I can get really nervous when I realize how much attention is on something like this. If I start looking at whether people are happy about the casting and the discourse that follows, it’s like the Eye of Sauron. I’m working on caring less about that.

On if she considers herself a romantic
I consider myself a hopeless romantic. The closest we get to magic is what can happen between two people. Until I actually fell in love with my husband, I was falling in love all the time. I fall in love with my friends every day. I love them very romantically, like how can we spend Christmas together romantically and familially? My biggest heartbreaks of my life have been friendships ending.

It hits different because when you fall in love in a romantic way with someone, some part of you understands that there is a chance that it might expire. There are a lot of things that have to go right for it to work. But with a friendship, you don’t go in with that armor up. You go in so vulnerable, and when it doesn’t work, it’s the biggest tears I’ve ever shed. I hesitate to say this because it’s embarrassing, but I talk about my biggest friendship heartbreak from high school at least monthly, probably weekly. It was really formative.

On whether she considered selling her wedding photos
I’m not going to lie and be like, “I never for one second considered it.” I genuinely thought about it. But the only thing I’ve known that I wanted to do on my wedding day since I was a kid was walk with the whole wedding party.

[The paparazzi] were, to their credit, extremely noninvasive. No one saw them. No one was upset by it. No one got hurt. I was kind of happy that those photographs ran in People because I had thought about doing a story about the dress. I worked with Prada, so it felt like a way to honor them without having to go out in public and say, “Look at me.”

[From Cosmopolitan]

I wish more celebrities would admit that they like getting caught out by the paparazzi occasionally. It’s probably specific to the occasion, it was her wedding day, and to Maya’s level of fame. She doesn’t get bothered by photographers regularly. In this piece the author Maxwell Losgar says as much, that Maya can go unnoticed in New York but that’s about to change now that she’s in The Hunger Games franchise. I’m not so sure, I think New Yorkers are just chill people who don’t notice celebrities as much.

As for being more heartbroken by friendships ending than a romantic breakup, I can sort-of relate to that. I got burned once and after that I thought of friends as temporary. People let you down. I think I cope by being more skeptical of friends and not letting people in. That’s a different issue that stems from the same trauma.

Josh Horowitz, Joe Keery, and Maya Hawke attend Netflix's "Stranger Things" Season 5 World Premiere at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres on November 06, 2025

Photos credit: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Netflix, Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Netflix and via Instagram and Twitter

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

6 Responses to “Maya Hawke: my biggest heartbreaks of my life have been friendships ending”

  1. Northernlala says:

    Those photos are awful! So amateurish.

  2. YankeeDoodles says:

    She sounds so lovely & genuine. There’s a paradoxically heroic dimension in being humble & exposing your true feelings, because first you have to admit them to yourself. That’s why great actors aren’t hams, they dig deeper.

  3. Sue says:

    I feel that in my gut. It took me a long time to accept that some of my oldest friendships had changed. I now understand and accept my own role in why they changed. And I now know that a group of my old friends ended up in this very weird, super close clique where wife swapping almost occurred. And I am okay with having distance from that!

  4. Lil Soleil says:

    Took me a long, long, loooong time to let some old childhood friends go with whom I would never be friends if I’d met them as an adult. Denial is a powerful thing as is misplaced loyalty and sunk cost thinking. And once you reframe friendships afterwards, it’s never the same… maybe that’s a good thing, who knows? It certainly can be a necessary thing, even though it’s disappointing, sometimes shockingly so…

  5. Lala11_7 says:

    Since I’ve NEVA had a lot of girlfriends & I 💕 them with…EVERYTHANG…yea it’s a hurt that hits…different 💔

  6. jferber says:

    I fumbled an important friendship some time ago and still think about it often.

Commenting Guidelines

Read the article before commenting.

We aim to be a friendly, welcoming site where people can discuss entertainment stories and current events in a lighthearted, safe environment without fear of harassment, excessive negativity, or bullying. Different opinions, backgrounds, ages, and nationalities are welcome here - hatred and bigotry are not. If you make racist or bigoted remarks, comment under multiple names, or wish death on anyone you will be banned. There are no second chances if you violate one of these basic rules.

By commenting you agree to our comment policy and our privacy policy

Do not engage with trolls, contrarians or rude people. Comment "troll" and we will see it.

Please e-mail the moderators at cbcomments at gmail.com to delete a comment if it's offensive or spam. If your comment disappears, it may have been eaten by the spam filter. Please email us to get it retrieved.

You can sign up to get an image next to your name at Gravatar.com Thank you!

Leave a comment after you have read the article

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment