Ethan Hawke disparaged movie director on set without knowing he was on microphone: ‘I was very mad’

Joey NolfiMon, October 5, 2026 at 3:20 PM UTC

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Ethan HawkeCredit: Gilbert Flores/Deadline via GettyKey Points -

Ethan Hawke recalled “spitting venom” about his Hamlet director on set.

The 55-year-old said he didn’t realize he was on a hot microphone during production.

“I was very mad,” Hawke admitted.

Though he’s since cooled down, actor Ethan Hawke admitted he was once caught in a hot mic situation that saw him disparage a director on a movie set.

During a recent panel conversation on stage with friend and fellow Hamlet star Kyle MacLachlan about the latter’s memoir, Hawke recalled that he criticized director Michael Almereyda between takes, without realizing he had a functioning microphone on him.

“We were doing a scene in a car where we had to wait for a long period of time, and I don’t know what I was mad about,” Hawke recalled at the event, per Entertainment Weekly’s sister publication, PEOPLE.

Ethan Hawke in New York City in 2025Credit: John Lamparski/Getty

He continued: “I went on to work with this director many times, and he’s a friend — but I was very mad at Michael that day and I was just spitting venom about this guy: ‘He doesn’t know what he’s f---ing doing.’”

He said he then looked out the window of the car on the set of the 2000 movie, “and the director has his headphones on,” with MacLachlan confirming that the pair were “mic’d up” in the moment, and that the filmmaker heard Hawke complain.

The filmmaker “took it in stride,” however, and maintained a working relationship with both actors going forward.

EW has attempted to reach Almereyda for comment on Hawke and MacLachlan’s recollection from the Hamlet set.

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“[It was] a group of people coming together for absolute bliss of loving work,” Hawke called the production, which also starred Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, and Bill Murray, among others.

“We had Bill Murray on set, who’s reading books on the background about how to perform Shakespeare. We were all so sincere and in love with it,” Hawke said of making the movie with Murray. “Because I was already a fan of [MacLachlan’s], but there was a looseness and a freedom that the real you possesses that I hadn’t seen in the earlier work because he was so comfortable with the verse, and not only comfortable with it, you enjoyed it.”

Ethan Hawke and daughter Maya HawkeCredit: Roy Rochlin/Getty

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Though the moment was tense, per Hawke and MacLachlan, the trio eventually reunited for future projects.

Hawke starred as Nikola Tesla in Almereyda’s 2020 biographical drama Tesla, which only received a limited theatrical release amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

MacLachlan reteamed with both men to star in the film as Thomas Edison, who worked with Tesla before becoming one of the engineer’s fiercest rivals.

on Entertainment Weekly

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”