Table of Contents
Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph: An Escape from the Drama of Hollywood
A major theme in the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) is the portrayal of dysfunctional relationships, egotistical artists, and characters caught in unfortunate situations, unable to find a way out. It goes without saying, therefore, that after the intensity of his work, 55-year-old director would understandably consider his home a place of refuge.
Anderson’s new movie, The One Battle After Another, is a strong contender for the 2026 Golden Globes with nine nominations. He and his longtime partner, Maya Rudolph, have a family of four kids. The Saturday Night Live star has played short, memorable roles in Anderson’s movies like Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza, but the couple is hardly what one would expect from a “Hollywood couple.”
They were a rarity on the awards circuit when Rudolph accompanied Anderson to the Gotham Awards last month. This public appearance raised the question of their enduring relationship, which they have chosen to keep away from the limelight.
Paul Thomas Anderson And Maya Rudolph Keep Their Relationship Very Private
Paul Thomas Anderson told the Los Angeles Times that the mere thought of being called “celebrity royalty” really makes him “quite nervous.” In 2018, he was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Nevertheless, the actor still manages to see the funny side of things even if he doesn’t want to be a public figure – once, he chuckled about a “terrifying … but funny” paparazzi photo that was taken while he was at the doctor’s.
“I got that,” he quipped, “and thought, ‘Well, that’s just impossible, isn’t it? There’s no way we could look like that, is there?'”
Anderson and Maya Rudolph are not entirely opposed to attending red carpet events, but over the course of their twenty-year relationship, they have only made a handful of appearances together. Rudolph has accompanied him to the Oscars a few times and will most likely be there again in March when Anderson is a frontrunner for his fourth Best Picture nomination for The One Battle After Another.
Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph Celebrate a “Chaotic” Family Life in the Valley
At their house in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley—basically the neighborhood where Paul Thomas Anderson grew up and wants to keep living—the couple is mostly focused on parenting. The couple is parents to four children: Pearl, 20, Lucille, 16, Jack, 14, and Minnie, 12. The youngest was named after Maya Rudolph’s mom, the late, great singer Minnie Riperton.
Anderson told The Los Angeles Times back in 2018 that their home vibe is “pretty Von Trapp,” though he confessed he didn’t really know The Sound of Music. He actually compared the vibe to a scene from You Can’t Take It with You. “There’s 50 different family members all banging away on different things in different parts of the house,” he described. “It’s somewhat like that. One is banging on the piano. One is banging on the drum. One is singing. It’s very, very, very chaotic.”
Anderson says the reason for keeping his homebase in the San Fernando Valley is continuity and legacy. “I have very vivid memories here,” he said, “and I like that my kids will have memories here as well.”
Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson: How a SNL After-Party Led to a Family of Six
Regardless of the children’s future plans in the acting business, all of them have already had their big-screen debuts in 2021’s Licorice Pizza, with the eldest daughter Pearl also portraying Sister Coco in The One Battle After Another.
Maya Rudolph, a native of Florida, resigned from Saturday Night Live when Pearl was just two years old, as she was extremely tired of the constant New York-Los Angeles commute. “It was too hard,” she told the New York Times in 2018. She remembered how tough it was to juggle the show’s party culture with motherhood. “My daughter’s sick. I’m going home,” she said thinking while the others were going out to see Justin Timberlake.
Eventually, the Loot actress figured out how to juggle her career and a family of six, telling People in 2019 that she no longer felt guilty about working. “I’m proud of the family I created in order to raise healthy, incredible people,” she said.
Many of the love stories that are still going strong today, the couple’s, is among the successful ones that have been sparked by SNL. They met at an after-party in 2001. Rudolph told Town & Country in 2024 that “he said he saw me in a sketch and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ But I don’t know… Maybe he just told me that to be sweet.”
How Paul Thomas Anderson’s SNL Visit Resulted in Meeting Maya Rudolph
Paul Thomas Anderson, who is a huge fan of comedy, took advantage of a rare chance of visiting Saturday Night Live when he was writing Punch-Drunk Love.
“I had run into Molly Shannon,” Anderson recounts in a 2022 Smartless episode. “She told me, ‘You could come and watch us do this.’ At that moment, I was so into the time Adam Sandler was at the show, so I jumped at the chance to… get a glimpse of the backstage.”
Anderson interacted with SNL performers, and directed a brief film, but after a week of the visit, he felt fully overwhelmed. “I was like in a daze,” he confessed. “It was fantastic, but I really don’t want to f–king do that again because it was way too much.”
He was about to leave when a note slipped into his hand that Maya Rudolph would be casting the next week—a meeting that would alter his existence.
Paul Thomas Anderson Talks About Seeing Maya Rudolph’s Name
Paul Thomas Anderson told Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes how looking at a list of cast members and seeing Maya Rudolph’s name had the day-changing intensity to him. “I can’t even explain it. It’s like you see a thing for the first time and shortly after you know that your whole life just changed. I don’t really know how or why,” he said.
He decided to follow the voice of his heart and kept watching Maya on television while staying in touch with some people from Saturday Night Live. “My God, this woman is outstanding,” he stated.
They barely had a moment together before Anderson left for London to shoot Punch-Drunk Love. However, he quickly came back to New York, which was good and yet something was still missing. He asked her out and since then they have been inseparable.
Even if they have not yet gotten married, they refer to each other as husband and wife. Rudolph explained to The New York Times that it felt “ooky” to refer to Anderson as her boyfriend after they had kids. “People understand what [husband] means,” she said. “It means he’s the father of my child, I live with him, we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere.”
