maya delmont / not just kids
Emerging actress and musician, Maya Delmont, is most notably seen in Jim Jarmusch’s 2019 film, “The Dead Don’t Die.” When she’s not acting, attending concerts, or jamming with her punk-rock band, Cannibal Girls, she’s attending political marches, raising money for social awareness, and taking courses at Hunter College on pressing issues such as women’s rights, environmental protection, and gender equality. To put it plainly: she’s a young force on the rise with a ton of conviction and the style to match.By JILLIAN SCHEINFELD Photography HAROLD JULIAN
“IT DOES FEEL APOCALYPTIC RIGHT NOW, BUT COVID-19 HAS REVEALED A LOT OF THE FAULTS OF THE U.S. ECONOMIC SYSTEM”
“THIS IS GOING TO END BADLY,” Adam Driver’s character says repeatedly throughout the Jim Jarmusch political horror-comedy The Dead Don’t Die. The film, released last summer, opens on an early spring backdrop in the fictional town of Centerville, with hazy morning mist and a lone police car roaming down half-paved roads. Despite the rural idyll—there’s an all-American diner, a quaint motel, and a single gas station—it soon becomes clear that something is wrong: Farm animals are going missing, and the sun shines at night while going dark during the day. Radio reports soon start circulating that thanks to “polar fracking”—a Jarmusch-coined global calamity—the earth has now spun off its axis, scrambling daytime and nighttime and, as we soon learn, jolting the dead out of their graves. Most of the film’s heroes, including the town’s three cops, played by Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, and Driver, transform one by one into flesh-eating zombies. The only survivors turn out to be three teenagers from a juvenile-delinquent home. This is when we first meet Maya Delmont, who plays Stella. She’s the character most completely isolated from the world, entirely holed up in the teen detention center, yet she is the most resourceful. When the zombies attack in full force, Stella shepherds her friends toward all the right hiding places and ends up saving the day. In the film, she represents the hopeful ingenuity of the future. As it turns out, that depiction isn’t so far off from who the 17-year-old Delmont actually is: a take-charge leader out to save the world.
TOP Jacket by Moon Choi, top by Noorism, pant by Fenty RIGHT Jacket by Schott, cashmere tee by Elder Statesman OPPOSITE Knit dress by Tibi, Rainbow Unicorn Surprise earring
Photographer HAROLD JULIAN Stylist STACEY CUNNINGHAM Hair & Make-up MARVIN ALEXANDER
“THE NUMBER OF ACTIVISTS FROM MY GENERATION IS ASTOUNDING. I’M SUPER FORTUNATE TO HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE OPEN TO HAVING DISCUSSIONS AND HAVE A PASSION FOR SOCIAL ACTIVISM”
I first met Delmont on a bright, chilly day last winter in Mountain Dale, NY, at the house that her Venezuelan-born parents bought as a second home six years ago. She has deep brown eyes, and her mop-top of curls was pulled back under a white lace bandanna. Her nose was adorned with a gold septum ring, and she appeared to me as the teenage offspring of actress Alia Shawkat and singer Ani DiFranco. A thick silver keychain connecting her back pocket to a belt loop on her JNCO-like skater-boy jeans jingled with keys. “It’s crazy that this film in particular was my first feature film ever,” she told me, wide-eyed yet self-possessed.
But while making a film with Jarmusch was a “dream come true”—previously,she had appeared in a number of commercials and shorts—Delmont has much more on her mind these days than just movie stardom. Like many city residents (she grew up in East Harlem), she has spent the past few months quarantining upstate, along with her brother, parents, and grandparents. During this time, she’s been actively raising awareness for numerous social justice causes by sharing information and participating in the political discourse unfolding on social media. On any given day, Delmont can be seen attending Zoom protest debriefs with her peers and playing guitar to raise money for environmental causes like NY2X Coalition and Fridays for Future on Instagram Live.
Even before the pandemic and the death of George Floyd, Delmont had already etched out her own space in Generation Z’s activist community. She attended youth climate strikes, befriended fellow young activists, and has taken college courses focused on women, gender, and environmental studies—while still in high school. “The number of activists from my generation is astounding,” she told me recently. “I’m super fortunate to have friends who are open to having discussions and have a passion for social activism.”
Delmont’s commitment to social justice has only taken on greater urgency since the start of the Black Lives Matter protests. The issues at the forefront of her mind are police reform, mental-health reform, the environment, and the prison-industrial complex. “Everything is interconnected,” she pointed out. That intersectional thinking is something that Delmont deems essential to breaking down and rebuilding the current political system. “It does feel apocalyptic right now,” she said. “But COVID-19 has revealed a lot of the faults of the U.S. economic system, and because of that, it’s allowed more people to see what’s going on. People need that slap in the face to become aware and take action.”
Looking toward the future, it’s hard not to keep drawing parallels between Delmont’s film character, with her keen survival strategies, and the real Maya: two young heroines with the intuition and intelligence to forge a new path forward. With kids like her leading the way, maybe there’s still hope after all.