Kate Hudson Has Comedy in Her DNA

Family, in its many forms, looms large for Kate Hudson these days. When she looks back on the influences that shaped her career, her mother, Goldie Hawn, and stepfather, Kurt Russell, are of course at the forefront. Her brothers, Oliver Hudson and Wyatt Russell, also became actors. She is, essentially, in a family business.

Running Point. Hudson’s Isla Gordon is suddenly put in charge of her family’s pro basketball team. She has to turn the team around while also managing the egos of the players and her three brothers, who all feel she’s unqualified for the job.

But as Hudson points out on Little Gold Men, it’s a little different to inherit a basketball team than to follow your parents into acting. “The arts is a totally weird, different world. We’re like circus folk,” she says. “Whereas if you have this enormous franchise with a father who kind of built this huge sports team and you have to live up to that, it is very different than anything I could relate to.”

Created by Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz, and David Stassen, the series allows Hudson to deliver scene-stealing work. Hudson spoke about why she finally decided to lead a TV series after decades of a fruitful movie career, what it was like to grow up with Hawn as a role model, and why she relates to her costar Chet Hanks. (Listen or read on below.)

Little Gold Men: Were you looking for a comedy series at the time this came along?

Kate Hudson: I was always looking for a good series. I think that there was a certain point in my life where I got really scared to do comedy, because I sometimes feel like you’re promised one thing and then the outcome is something else. A lot of times, you read a script and it’s got a little bit more risk in it, and then you start the process of doing it and it starts to get watered down. I’ve had a couple experiences that made me very timid to sign onto something. But when Mindy [Kaling] came and I saw just the logline, I immediately knew I was going to do it. It was loosely based on Jeanie Buss, the woman who ends up becoming the president of a basketball team. And then I read the script, and it was so great. When I sat down with Mindy, I was like, “is this pilot what you want to make, or is this gonna change? Is Netflix going to change it? Is Warner Bros. going to change it?” And she goes, “No.” I got just so excited because I just knew I was in the best hands.

You’re so great at this sort of comedy. Where does your comedy inspiration come from? Is it actors you watched growing up?

Like this woman I know named Goldie Hawn?

Maybe that.

The great master class of my life. My mother is one of the great physical comedians of all time. It’s so subtle, but her physicality is so insanely funny. I mean, even in life, how her body manifests – her comedy is so hilarious. Same with my brother Oliver. We have a very silly family. It might be a DNA thing – my daughter is so physical, her physicality is so profoundly funny, and she’s only six. I think from Judy Holiday to Lucille Ball, to my mother, to Carol Burnett. Jim Carrey is one of the greats. Steve Martin, Martin Short. Kristen Wiig – her physicality is insane.

But also my physical comedy, even though I can go kind of broad and a little bit more silly, I feel like my physical comedy comes out of things that are more rooted. It feels more like stunt work. Even the drug drawer, like, I had a welt on my knee for months because every time I got up, I was hitting that drug drawer. It’s so much fun. It’s just commitment.

How did you most relate to Isla?

I definitely relate to what it is to be the only girl. I have three brothers—our unit was me and three boys. As the only girl, you are always trying to keep up. You want to get invited into the boys’ locker room; they don’t really want you in there. You feel like a bit of an outsider.

I’ve had moments in my personal life with Ollie and Wyatt where I’ve called them during, you know, Sunday football, and they’re together at Ollie’s house and I’m like, “why didn’t you call me?” I also know what it’s like to want your family to see you as capable of doing great things and making good choices, and for them to see you as someone who’s able to lead.

This is the first time you’ve led a TV show. I assume there must have been other TV opportunities that came along over the years that you maybe said no to.

There’s been things that I haven’t gotten as well that I’ve wanted. But I really have leaned into the gut thing—my gut and my heart. As you get older, your priorities change. What are the things that you really wanna be doing? I spent a lot of my thirties wanting to be home. The reality is television, even music, it just takes you away from your kids. I’ve got my 6-year-old, I’ve got a 13-year-old. One is cooked—he’s 21, and almost done with college. It’s hard as a mom because I want to be home.

But now as Rani got a little bit older, I was so starving to go back into what my soul wants to be doing, which is making music and telling stories and performing.

You have such a strong supporting cast. I was particularly surprised by Chet Hanks.

Isn’t he so great? He’s so talented.

Were you surprised by his performance?

No, because I know what it’s like to grow up with family that are storytellers. I think when you grow up with famous parents, people want to be like, “Oh that’s too easy.” But it’s like any other business. If you grow up with parents who are brilliant with math, if you’ve got four children, a lot of times they’re gonna also have the same beautiful linear brain. Everybody kept saying in the casting process, “[the character’s] like Chet Hanks.” Finally Mindy’s like, “We should just get Chet Hanks.”

Chet’s a wild one and very unpredictable, which is why we cast him. But his talent was not surprising to me at all. It’s just a moment, but I remember doing the scene with him where I’m trying to apologize for having to send his mom away. And when he walked out and turned around and thanked me – there is a whole wellspring of talent in Chet Hanks that has not even been touched. I’m glad he leaned in, you know?

Has your understanding of your parents’ own experience in this business changed as you’ve gotten older and had a family as well?

When we were younger, they never worked at the same time.There was only one time, when I was like 16, where they were both working at the same time. Kurt was actually talking the other day about how he decided not to do a movie because I had too much freedom. He was like, “I’m not working after this movie, because I need to be home to watch my teenager.”

But they worked a lot. My mom was gone a lot. I think their generation is different than our generation. We’re much more home-centric. We traveled a lot with my mom. There was a lot of spontaneous leaving and traveling and living in different places. Oliver and I are much more structured. We’re home, kids are in school. Because when you grow up with that lack of structure, I think you sort of overcompensate.

Almost Famous came out 25 years ago. Do you feel like it would be easier or harder to have a breakout like that now?

It’s unfair to even compare the two, because at that point, it was such a different industry. We didn’t have all these different outlets. The studio had their slate of films, and you had a lot more support from the studio, a lot more money behind creating a hit movie or new stars or betting on new talent. So it was a much smaller pool. Much more competitive as well. There wasn’t as much material. Now it’s just a totally different beast.

I sometimes feel sad because there’s so much great talent, but they’re not getting the actual, real muscle behind them to really become a household name. I think the issue is we used to all sit and watch movies together, because that’s what we had. We didn’t have 500 million different streamers. We all sat together and watched things together. We had a family experience, whether it was with television, whether it was with the movies—we were watching at home, going to Blockbuster. We could only pick two or three movies, and we’d sit and watch them all weekend.

I remember Top Gun, for instance, as a kid. I remember going to Blockbuster, getting Top Gun—and all these overdue [charges] cause we just kept watching it over and over and over and over again. Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis became these idols. We knew every word they said, and it wasn’t just the kids, it was the parents too. So there’s this sort of multi-generational star that’s created when you don’t have as much access. I’m like, the last of that generation. I came in at 20 for Almost Famous, and five, seven years later, the industry just completely started to change.

I feel really lucky that that’s when it happened for me, because it’s a totally different world. It’s much harder, because the industry doesn’t know what it is right now

Do you have any past projects that you feel were underappreciated?

Two of them: I love Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon. It’s such a cool movie. Ana Lily Amirpour is such an amazing director. She’s so fucking great, and her brain is just on another level. I loved working with her. I wish more people saw that movie. And I really love Music. I think Sia made a really amazing movie, and I was very proud of that film.

Speaking of music, you released your first album last year. Why now?

I actually had moments where people wanted to make albums [with me], and I was like too scared. I had moments where I was like, “okay, now I wanna make an album” in my thirties, and a lot of people were like, “You’re a little bit too old to start.” But music was always my first love, and I’ve been writing songs for so long. I was like, if I died tomorrow, I know I put my all in as a mom. But creatively, I was not satisfied. I have been so terrified to share music with people that it’s like, locked in my throat chakra.

In COVID, my first thing was, I have to be putting my music in the world. I don’t care who hears it. It’s ok if everyone hates it. And I’m so happy, because something happened when I released my album. My whole nervous system changed. I feel like my whole life got calmer.

I would say to anyone: just do it. I say this to my kids a lot, which is that as long as you can pay your bills—this sort of flighty, dreamy, creative brain can be very destructive if you don’t have some structure or understanding that we have to be able to afford food on the table and somewhere to live and be smart, you know? But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have this creative experience that is amazing.

Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.