Ethan Hawke: his daughter’s friends didn't get Before Sunrise’s ending — "so unrealistic"
Ethan Hawke says his daughter’s friends left their first Before Sunrise watch with a perfectly modern gripe — and it’s probably not the one you’re expecting.
When Ethan Hawke asked his eldest daughter what her friends thought after she showed them Before Sunrise, the reaction stopped him cold. As he told GQ’s One More Question, the group admired the film but got hung up on the most 2026 detail imaginable.
“Love that movie, but it was just so unrealistic,”
Their confusion centered on Jesse and Céline’s choice to part without swapping numbers. Hawke said he had to explain that when the movie was shot in 1994 and released in 1995, cell phones weren’t a given — and that the film wasn’t making a stylistic point about ditching technology.
“They thought we were making an artistic choice to have Jesse and Celine not have a phone,”
That single missing artifact changes how the romance lands for younger viewers. The couple’s plan to meet again in six months once felt thrillingly risky because the connection could actually vanish. Director Richard Linklater has previously talked about that scarcity giving the story its urgency; today, the same setup reads like a time capsule from a world before DMs and location sharing.
Back in Tulsa
Meanwhile, Hawke is very much in the present tense on TV. Season 2 of The Lowdown premiered October 14 on FX, with episodes also streaming on Hulu . He’s back as Lee Raybon, a self-described Tulsa “truthstorian,” rare-book dealer, and trouble magnet whose fixation on corruption has a way of getting him threatened.
- Tommy Lee Jones — Lee Raybon Sr., Lee’s estranged grifter father (awkward, since Lee has told daughter Francis her grandfather is dead)
- Betty Gilpin — joins the cast for the eight-episode season
Creator Sterlin Harjo keeps Tulsa baked into the show’s DNA. Hawke said filming in Tulsa was a big part of the draw, praising the communities, musicians, artists and local characters he met there; he even joked that actors unwilling to shoot in Oklahoma didn’t deserve the chance.
Season 2 runs eight episodes and is now airing on FX, with episodes streaming on Hulu.