“I Want to Cuddle You So Bad”: Maisy Stella, in Conversation With Anne Hathaway

Every once in a while, a teenage character in Hollywood is played by an actual teenager. That’s the case in Megan Park’s coming-of-age dramedy My Old Ass, which comes out in select theaters next Friday and goes wide on Septemner 27th. In it, Maisy Stella plays Elliott Labrant, a recent high school graduate whose 18th-birthday mushroom trip takes her on a strange journey of literal self-discovery after she comes face-to-face with an older version of herself played by Aubrey Plaza. When shooting began two years ago, Stella hadn’t taken a role since her appearance on the primetime soap Nashville at the tender age of 15. In the ensuing years, she felt the same kinds of growing pains as her character. Now that the film’s nearly out, the Ontario native is heartened by the response. “I never could have imagined the actual warmth and love that has surrounded the movie,” Stella told Anne Hathaway, who plays her mother in a forthcoming (and as yet unnamed) feature from director David Robert Mitchell. “That’s always an interesting thing, to be experiencing what you’ve been waiting to happen.” On Zoom last week, Stella and Hathaway drank in the moment and talked about palm readers, managing on-set pressures, and how much they love each other. 

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ANNE HATHAWAY: Goodness gracious. Hi, gorge.

MAISY STELLA: I’m so happy to see you.

HATHAWAY: I’m sorry to keep you waiting.

STELLA: You’re literally here actually on the dot.

HATHAWAY: But you were here first.

STELLA: Thank you so much for doing this. I cannot believe it. 

HATHAWAY: The movie is so wonderful.

STELLA: Really?

HATHAWAY: Hold on, I wrote this down because I wanted to get it right. “The movie is lovable and wonderful. I want everyone to see it. It’s a perfect gem, and you are luminous and alive and funny and perfect in it. Congrats.”

STELLA: From you, I love you. Thank you so much.

HATHAWAY: I love you so much. Are you good?

STELLA: I’m so good. I’ve been thinking about you so much because it’s August, and I know you were resting in August. 

HATHAWAY: You have no idea.

STELLA: You look so beautiful and glowing. I can see it.

HATHAWAY: We’re actually having the strangest weather here. The wind’s blowing very ferociously. The water’s super choppy. And then out of nowhere, while I was watching your movie, the biggest hawk landed on our porch.

STELLA: Oh my goodness. Annie, this is so weird. My uncle who passed away, that’s his sign for me and my sisters. Every time we see hawks flying we’re always like, “That’s David.” I swear. I have chills everywhere. I have literally hundreds of videos of hawks flying on my phone. 

HATHAWAY: Well, hawks are very important for me too, so I am just going to use that as our kickoff question: do you believe in signs?

STELLA: I believe in signs more than anyone has ever believed in signs. My whole family, we’re all little witches. My mom was very spiritual and her favorite saying was, “Whatever you feed grows.” I was taught to look for signs in my life to help guide me, and I felt so many signs in regards to My Old Ass. I did a lot of writing before I had booked it, literally begging the universe to let me work with Megan [Park]. I felt so confident that we would end up holding hands at some point in our lives. 

HATHAWAY: You felt a sense of destiny with her?

STELLA: Absolutely. For a long time, we were trying to figure out if we were somehow related because we’re from a few towns over in Canada. Do you believe in signs?

HATHAWAY: Big time. My grandma passed when I was eight, and she sent me a sign. I hadn’t thought about it in a really long time until I was telling someone about it, and then a few hours later I got my first one from her in ages.

STELLA: What’s your sign from her?

HATHAWAY: I will tell you about that over text. I’ll send you a picture of it, actually.

STELLA: I love it. When I was filming My Old Ass, my sign was bumblebees. I remember when I was really in the pit of it, working so much, they would always land on me. I looked up, “Bee spiritual meaning” and it was like, “The working bee needs to remember to smell the flowers.” And I honestly needed to hear that.

HATHAWAY: That’s so beautiful.

STELLA: Isn’t that so sweet?

HATHAWAY: I wrote down a lot of questions while I was watching this wonderful, soulful, spirited movie that you are perfect in. And I’m going to get to all of them, but one of the things I wanted to mention was: has your mom ever read the Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh?

STELLA: No, I don’t think so.

HATHAWAY: Okay. He wrote this amazing book called Anger, and in it he describes… What was the thing you said, about feeding?

STELLA: “Whatever you feed grows.”

HATHAWAY: He talks about that, and he talks about how anger is normal. He talks about how our inner landscapes are a garden, and the seeds of emotion that you water the most, those are the ones that are going to grow. So if you tend to your resentments more than joy or gratitude or hope, you’re going to harvest a whole lot of anger.

STELLA: I love that. That really is the message my instilled in us when we were younger: always focus on the positives. Almost a little too much, where any type of complaint was not at all allowed. We always had to focus on the positives. 

HATHAWAY: Do you have a secret complaint that you’ve always wanted to say out loud?

STELLA: Oh, a secret complaint. [My sister] Lennon and I are outlets for each other. We just let it out. If I’m riled up, I’ll just call her.

HATHAWAY: That’s good. I don’t like to complain because I think, “If I complain, then I’m going to put out that I don’t want to be here.”

STELLA: I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who complains less in my life. I was so floored by you every day of filming. I remember being like, “Okay, this human is at the very top and has done more than you could ever dream of doing,” and you still seemed so grateful to be there.

HATHAWAY: Well, we had such an amazing crew on this movie. When I was watching My Old Ass, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I love Elliott.” Elliott and Audrey [Stella’s character in she and Hathaway’s upcoming film] are so different, and I’ve only spent time with you as Audrey. I see where you overlap with Audrey, but now I also see where you overlap with Elliott. So I was curious, do you identify with one of them more? Are you like neither of them? And do you take on the personalities of the characters you play?

STELLA: Beautifully worded. I would say I definitely relate more to Elliott. Megan Park chooses to adapt to people, which is not always how it works. But that really is how she likes to do things. All of the characters in the movie are a very slightly altered version of who we all really were and are. It was bizarre for me that it’s my first movie, because I couldn’t believe that I was getting to do something that felt so seamless. It was a challenge in a lot of ways, but not in searching for Elliott. With Audrey, I felt for her more than I felt like her, if that makes sense.

HATHAWAY: Wow.

STELLA: There was a lot of buried sexual identity. Also, we can’t really say much about the movie—

HATHAWAY: No, we can’t, can we? Shoot.

STELLA: Well, I really don’t remember anyway, so it’s fine.

HATHAWAY: Going back, you just said so many lovely things about me and I wanted to say thank you. You’re the best, and I miss you. I want to cuddle you so bad. 

STELLA: No, I miss your energy so much. You have such a zen and motherly energy. I was at an event last night, and they asked about you. I was like, “She made sure I had electrolytes in my water every day.”

HATHAWAY: I wanted to give you your independence, but I always did want to make sure you were hydrated.

STELLA: You did.

HATHAWAY: I’m always like, “I hope she doesn’t think that it’s weird that I’m older than her, but I truly feel a connection that’s really exciting.” I’ve done enough of these to know how to get on with people, but it’s really exciting when you truly vibe with someone. Does that make sense?

STELLA: Oh my god. 

HATHAWAY: I care about you, whatever your name is. I can’t remember, it’s been so long. What’s something in the script of My Old Ass that scared you initially but you wound up loving on the day?

STELLA: It was ecause I loved it so much, but the scene on the porch between me and Maria [Dizzia], who plays my mom, where she’s talking about me being a baby and how proud she is of me. When I read that in the script, I was literally weeping. I was reading all the lines out loud because I couldn’t hold it in. I had a full monologue in that scene. And Megan and the editor [Jennifer Vecchiarello] called me and said, “It’s the saddest thing we’ve ever seen. We can’t use it.” I felt scared of that scene because I cared so much about it, and I wanted it to come across the way that it did on paper. It can be hard to really make the tone transfer.

HATHAWAY: There’s one moment where you become visibly moved by what you’re hearing. And I was like, “There’s Maisy, my little emotional warrior. The one that always got us through the film we can’t talk about right now.”

STELLA: So funny.

HATHAWAY: You just have to learn to surrender to the pressure. I did this one show called Modern Love, and there’s a scene in it where my character, she’s manic-depressive and telling someone for the first time what it’s like for her. I arrived at the location, and it was at the base of a subway station. So we had to do this seven-minute-long, turn-yourself-inside-out scene in two-minute stretches, and then hold for three minutes while the train passed.

STELLA: No.

HATHAWAY: Sound would give us the cue, and we’d have to go right back into the scene. And that’s how we got through it.

STELLA: That’s really hard to do.

HATHAWAY: I remember thinking, “This is hard. This isn’t fair.” And I also remember thinking, “Neither of those things matter right now.” I came out of it a much better actor because I learned that you can’t make excuses for anything. You can’t bail.

STELLA: Can you please write a book?

HATHAWAY: What? Oh my gosh, I’m going to pretend that question never got asked. My question is: have you ever spoken to a psychic?

STELLA: Yes.

HATHAWAY: Have you followed a psychic’s advice?

STELLA: Yes. But I’ve had good and bad experiences with psychics. A couple months ago, I was driving by myself and passed a psychic in Nashville. It was a little house. Me being me, I was like, “It could be a sign.” So I literally went in by myself. She did a full tarot deck reading on me and a hand reading. She said very accurate things about me. She was insinuating that the next year was going to be really crazy and maybe some things that I’ll text you about.

HATHAWAY: I’ll text you what my psychic said too.

STELLA: I love a good psychic. Do you go to a specific one?

HATHAWAY: I feel like I have a little bit of a cheat because I have an amazing friend who’s an astrologist, so I can ask her what dreams and animal signs mean.

STELLA: Love that.

HATHAWAY: The reason I asked the psychic thing is because Aubrey Plaza’s character gives you some advice and you do your best to follow it. It was kind of like talking to a psychic. But a very, very precise one.

STELLA: Yeah, it really is.

HATHAWAY: So your psychic told you that you were about to experience a year of change. Where do you think you’re at in that journey, and how are you feeling about it compared to Elliott?

STELLA: It was very interesting. When I filmed it, we were in a similar position. I was doing my first movie and Elliott was going to college for the first time. We were both in this transitional period, in the breath right before something happens. I filmed it two years ago. For two years, you sit with it a lot and think about what’s going to happen, but I never could have imagined the actual warmth and love that has surrounded the movie. And that’s always an interesting thing, to be experiencing what you’ve been waiting to happen. Right now, I’m feeling a lot of excitement and anticipation. And I am just accepting the change. People have come into my life; people have left my life. I feel good right now, though. I really do.

HATHAWAY: I hope that lasts forever.

STELLA: I hope so too.

HATHAWAY: I feel like 18 to 20 is such a crucial two years. It’s huge. What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?

STELLA: I fight the urge to criticize my 18-year-old self. I genuinely did the best that I could at the time. I was standing in Elliott’s shoes. I was right there with her. And I think Elliott softened me a bit and made me feel more open to love and loss. Honestly, Megan gave my 18-year-old self really good advice before filming. She was like, “You’ll blink and it’s over. It’s like a wedding. Filming is going to go by so fast.” Now, I focus on really taking it all in. That was the best advice. And I would make sure that my 18-year-old self really knows that. 

HATHAWAY: This is my last question: what makes Aubrey Plaza and Megan Park so amazing? Because they’re so amazing.

STELLA: They are so amazing. Aubrey Plaza, there is no one like her. She is standalone to me. The second she was attached, everything fell into place. The movie made sense to me. Working with her was surreal for me. I’ve admired her from afar my whole life. But she’s very consistent. You put her in any room and she’s the same person. Megan Park is a standalone director and writer in my eyes because she’s egoless. She’s so talented at writing for the younger generation. She’s very collaborative and very fluid. And I think she’s going to work with so many people that are going to fall in love with her. I’m very, very in love with both of them.

HATHAWAY: I’m probably speaking for them, but they love you right back.