This One's For the PR Folks

How a Maya Hawke comment speaks to what's happening in entertainment journalism

“Journalism is Fucked and We’re All Doomed” is my ongoing column looking at issues affecting entertainment journalism writers. It’s an offshoot of my series The Trade, an examination and exploration of topics in the entertainment industry. If you want to read the full story consider becoming a paid-subscriber. Not only do you get access to the awesomeness below, but you’ll be able to read every paid post including our monthly watch diaries, disability articles, and more.

Over the weekend actress Maya Hawke did an appearance on the “Happy, Sad, Confused” podcast and talked about her antipathy to social media. “I don’t care about Instagram. Instagram sucks. Right, well just so you know, if you have over this many followers you can get the movie funded,” she said. “It’s a really confusing line to walk.”

She then went on to say this: “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,'” Hawke recalled. “‘So if you delete your Instagram and I lose those followers, understand these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.'”