Maude Apatow Is More Than Just Another Celeb Spawn

Each year, Chanel hosts a celebration in honor of the Tribeca Film Festival in honor of artists like Jeff Koons, Ghada Amer, Meghan Boody, Nancy Dwyer and more, who have contributed original artwork to the award-winning filmmakers showcasing their work at TIFF.

This year’s attendees were as star-studded as ever: Robert De Niro and his wife Grace Hightower (who have been guests of the Chanel dinner for years), Katie Holmes, Suki Waterhouse, Ray Liotta, Spike Lee, Selah Marley, Alex Pettyfer … the guest list was a healthy mix of old New York film and new, rising talent.

Among the rising talent: Maude Apatow, the 20-year-old actress and writer that you probably know best as “that adorably hilarious little kid” from Knocked Up or This Is 40. Apatow was praised for her comedic timing in the film even as a 9-year-old. No doubt, it helped to have her parents on set: writer/director Judd Apatow and actress/co-star Leslie Mann.

But as Apatow got older, her humor matured from on-screen cutesy to uninhibited, earnest humor. This time, via her Twitter account.

“I started my Twitter when I was in seventh grade,” Apatow tells me as she’s prepping for her big night with Chanel. “I was really young and tweeting about going to bar and bat-mitzvahs. It’s funny to look at now. I wasn’t judging myself because I was so young, and I didn’t really care. And as I started to get older … maybe I just started to get nervous about posting and what people would think, which is kind of sad. Ugh, that’s a horrible answer,” she quickly follows.

Apatow has a tendency to downplay herself (“I’m so awkward at this,” or “I’m so terrible at talking,”), but watch a clip of her in her latest film, The House of Tomorrow, it’s clear she’s about to be the next big thing.

“We actually shot [the film] almost two years ago,” she tells me. “I had just graduated high school when we shot it. Other People was the movie that I did without my parents, but this was first movie that I ever shot out of state, which was a big deal. It was my first real independent experience.”

In The House of Tomorrow, Apatow plays Meredith, a teenager who meets (and disrupts the life of) a socially awkward boy who’s been living in a geodesic dome with his Nana.

“The teenagers were written really well,” Apatow says. “They’re very distinct and very complicated, and I found that really compelling in the script. It’s challenging to capture teenagers accurately, and I think this movie did a really good job showing all the different sides of kids and how complicated they are instead of using stereotypes of what people think kids are like.“

Next up? Another reportage of teenage life, this time in Assassination Nation, where a group of high-school girls finds their social media accounts hacked and posted publicly, throughout the entire town. Think of it like a modern day Salem Witch Trials sort of thing.

“I was really young, and I got a lot of followers,” Apatow says of her own personal experience using social media. “It’s a little more pressure to be funny or sound smart. But I think people are generally very supportive. People were really encouraging and nice about my writing. That was a really positive thing, especially at 13. That’s the worst age, and you’re so insecure.”