Inside Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson's Private World

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Paul Thomas Anderson's movies are all about dysfunctional relationships, egomaniacal artists, fizzling dreams and people caught in predicaments requiring drastic measures to get out of.

So, no wonder home is a respite for the 55-year-old, whose latest film, One Battle After Another, is poised to have a big night at the 2026 Oscars March 15 at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre, heading in hot with 13 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

By Anderson's side throughout awards season has been his longtime partner Maya Rudolph, in case you were wondering why they were kissing at the Golden Globes or anything like that.

Because while they've collaborated here and there, the Saturday Night Live alum stealing a few scenes in Anderson's Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza, they are the opposite of a Hollywood couple.

In fact, hearing they had been dubbed celebrity royalty in 2018 made Anderson, as he told the Los Angeles Times, "quite nervous." Yet he had a big laugh at a paparazzi photo he was unaware had been taken when they were on their way to a doctor's appointment, calling it "horrifying…but hilarious."

"I remember seeing that," he quipped, "thinking, 'Wow. There’s no way we could look like that, is there?'"

Meanwhile, at home in Southern California's San Fernando Valley, where Anderson grew up and plans to never leave, the couple are first and foremost parents to Pearl, 20, Lucille, 16, Jack, 14, and Minnie, 12, their youngest named after Rudolph's late mom, singer Minnie Riperton.

"It’s pretty Von Trapp," Anderson told the LA Times in 2018. "I don’t know that movie that well. But there’s a scene in You Can’t Take It with You where a woman enters and there’s 50 different family members all banging away on different things in different parts of the house. It’s a little like that. This one’s banging on the piano. This one’s banging on the drum. This one’s singing. It’s very chaotic."

As for staying put in the SFV for most of his life, he explained, "My memories are strong here and I like seeing my kids have memories here as well."

Whether or not their musically inclined brood pursue acting for the long run, all four kids made their big screen debut in 2021's Licorice Pizza, while Pearl also played Sister Coco (of the Brave Beaver order) in One Battle After Another.

Rudolph, who's originally from Florida, left SNL when Pearl was 2, tired of commuting between New York and L.A.

“It was too hard,” the still-in-demand impressionist told the New York Times in 2018. “And nobody else understands or cares, when they don’t have kids. They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s cool...What are you guys doing tonight?’ They’re like, ‘We’re going to see Justin Timberlake because Andy’s doing “Dick in a Box” with him! What are you doing?’ And I was like [faraway stare] 'My daughter’s sick. I’m going home.'"

“I make sure that it’s the best possible scenario,” Rudolph told People in 2019. “And I [started] feeling less guilty because I’m proud of the family I created in order to raise healthy, incredible people.”

And count Rudolph and Anderson among the successful love matches that SNL has wrought, the pair meeting at an after-party in 2001.

"He said he saw me in a sketch and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry,’” Rudolph told Town & Country in 2024. “But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Maybe he just told me that to be sweet.”

"I can remember seeing her name on that piece of paper," he told Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. "I don't know if you've had any feeling like this, but you see something for the first time and you realize that my life has just changed. I don't know how, I don't know why."

"Looking back," he noted, "obviously that kind of impulse, that shining kind of feeling that can happen to any of us if we're open to it, happened. So, I roamed around and then I saw her on television and I saw what she was doing. And I stayed in touch with a few people from the show and I was like, 'My God, this woman's amazing.'"

He returned to the set and they met, but then he had to go to London to start filming Punch-Drunk Love. When he got there, "I said, 'Well, something didn't feel right,' and I just came back to New York."

After which he asked her out and they've been together ever since.

They've yet to officially get married, but they refer to each other as husband and wife, Rudolph telling the NY Times it felt "ooky" to call Anderson her boyfriend once they became parents.

"People know what [husband] means," she explained. "It means he’s the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere.”

Well, except the Academy Awards. See how the stars have been celebrating so far at all the pre-Oscar parties: