Kate Hudson Takes Hollywood By The Balls

For Kate Hudson, working on Running Point was like feasting at a heartthrob buffet. There was Max Greenfield at peak Nice Jewish Boy, Jay Ellis still sporting his Top Gun: Maverick abs, and Justin Theroux doing his best Hunter Biden (complimentary) as a dirtbag scion. “I was like, ‘What a dream! We have so many beautiful men to work with every day!’” Hudson tells me so enthusiastically it sounds like she might drop a hubba hubba. A relative newcomer, actor Toby Sandeman, made her full-on weak in the knees. “I remember there’s a scene where he comes in in this white suit, and he actually took my breath away. I literally was like, ‘Hi.’”

Hudson, 45, has reigned as the high priestess of boy craziness for nearly a quarter century, ever since she burst into our collective consciousness playing star groupie Penny Lane in Almost Famous, a role that at age 21 earned her an Oscar nomination. This is a woman who’s so infatuated with the opposite sex, in fact, that she once took a full year off of men to help curb the less desirable side effects of the affliction. “I’m the biggest flirt on the planet. So I think anybody who’s ever been with me is very aware that I flirt with everybody — girls, boys,” she says matter of factly. Her fiancé, musician Danny Fujikawa, with whom she has daughter Rani, has learned to roll with it since they first met decades ago as friends. (Hudson also has a son with The Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson and another son with Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.) “Thank God Danny is my partner. He can handle this. I met the right guy.”

Her Running Point character, Isla Gordon, however, has no time for such funny business. The Netflix workplace comedy — co-created by Mindy Kaling and also co-starring Brenda Song and The Other Two’s Drew Tarver — begins when Isla is unexpectedly appointed the head of her family’s basketball dynasty, the Los Angeles Waves. (If that plot sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s inspired by the real life of president and controlling owner of the Lakers, Jeanie Buss.) The rest of the season follows Isla as she fights for the respect of her brothers and the organization — and finds Hudson in one of her most resplendent performances to date.

“It’s not just about finding love. It’s really about finding your place, your confidence in the things that you want in your life, whether it’s work or relationships,” she says as we chat in a corner of Netflix’s Los Angeles HQ. And honestly, who better to give a lesson in honing your confidence than Kate Hudson, perhaps the most light-on-her-feet movie star in our gravitational orbit?

Self-esteem can be hard to come by 1) even in the best of times, and 2) when you’re being raised in Hollywood by the town’s forever golden girl, Goldie Hawn. But Hudson’s personae both onscreen and off have overflowed with it ever since she first uttered the phrase “it’s all happening.”

Sure, there are her leading-lady good looks, which are so synonymous with SoCal cool that the California tourism board should cut her a monthly check. But it’s her ability to completely, unselfconsciously commit to the bit — there’s no eye-rolling or playful irony in her now-iconic rendition of “You’re So Vain” in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, just Hudson belting so poorly she could shatter glass — that made her the queen of the genre for an entire decade. (Incidentally, unabashedness is also the quality Hudson finds most important in the bedroom: “The best part about sex in your 40s, honestly, is the freedom,” she says. “Sex isn’t supposed to be pretty, and I think that when you get older you kind of have more fun with that.”)

Running Point may be her first lead television role, but Hudson is nothing short of a capital M movie star. It’s a small thrill to observe the team at Netflix treat her as such: When she asks for the temperature to be turned up in our meeting space, a technician is quickly dispatched and a blanket is provided. The instantly fetched afghan isn’t quite a match with her structured Thom Browne skirt suit, but this is Kate Hudson, so the effect is a masterclass in power clashing. She speaks like a movie star, too, as if she’s addressing an audience from a podium rather than just another person in the same drafty, windowless conference chamber.

“Sometimes when you’re that young and self-possessed, a lot of people want to bring you down. But my parents always assured me that that wasn’t about me.”

Though Hudson has been more selective about roles in recent years, it’s clear that at 45, she’s at the height of her powers, both personally and professionally. She’s feeling herself, she tells me, in ways she hasn’t in a long time. “In COVID, I realized that my creativity had been shut off for a long time. In those moments of fear, I was like, ‘I’m not putting out what I want to be totally putting out right now.’ Music was the big flashing red light for me,” she says of her debut pop-rock album, Glorious, which dropped last spring. (Entering the music industry in your 40s? That also takes guts.) “I’m very clear about the things that I really want to be doing now in my life. Whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, I know how my machine wants to function.”

Genetics have been kind to Kate Hudson, of course. As the daughter of Goldie Hawn, she inherited the easy effervescence and movie star magic dust that cemented Hawn as a generational talent. But it was through watching all the many ways her mom bucked convention over the years that Hudson picked up her pluck, too. Like when Hawn divorced Hudson’s father, musician Bill Hudson, in 1982 and then took up with the younger actor Kurt Russell, whom she’s still living in lawfully unwedded bliss with to this day. (Hudson considers Russell — “Pa” — her father, as he raised her since she was 4.) Or when Hawn decided she wanted to take a more hands-on approach to her own career with 1980s projects like the iconic Overboard and the Academy Award-nominated Private Benjamin.

“Mom was really the first actress to produce her own movies. She just was like, ‘If Warren can do it, I can do it,’” Hudson says, referring to Warren Beatty, Hawn’s co-star from films like Shampoo and Dollars. “It really was very challenging, but my mom just powered through it and made f*cking great movies. I mean, she knew what she was doing.”

It was also important to Hawn that her hutzpah didn’t skip a generation. “I had parents that instilled in me that it was OK to be self-possessed and to believe in myself. I was very driven when it came to wanting to be in the arts. I didn’t need to do a talent show with three people; I wanted to be out there by myself dancing,” says Hudson. “Sometimes when you’re that young and you’re that self-possessed, there’s a lot of people that want to bring you down. And I did receive a lot of pushback from peers. But my parents always assured me that that wasn’t about me. That it was OK to go out there and do a routine by myself.”

“I’m very clear about the things that I really want to be doing now in my life. Whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, I know how my machine wants to function.”

After graduating high school, Hudson decided to dive right into acting. She proved herself quickly with a slew of independent movies and, soon after, Almost Famous. But Hudson considers 2003’s How to Lose a Guy her true arrival, thanks to the mentorship of late producer Lynda Obst, who had worked closely with Nora Ephron on projects like This Is My Life and Sleepless in Seattle.

“I was very young, 22, but she really trusted my opinions. I was there from the inception: the writing, rewrites, casting, director choices, everything. She just was like, ‘You’re my partner on this. This is what we’re doing,’” Hudson says, her eyes welling. “That was the greatest gift early on in my career. When you talk about confidence-building, she demanded I be confident in my ideas.”

The following year, Hudson gave birth to the first of her three children. Though she didn’t anticipate that they’d also be raised in a big, blended family like her own — “The unit that I’ve created with three children and three different fathers is a seriously strong unit, and it’s ours,” she told The Sunday Times in 2022 — she wanted to be the same wellspring of encouragement her parents were for her. Just the other day, at a family friend’s bar mitzvah, she heard some advice that summed up her philosophy: “As a parent, you want your kids to love themselves. You want them to know what the core of who they are is and to honor it, to love it, and to love themselves.” She models that during Bustle’s photo shoot, taking breaks to dance with Rani, who has taken on DJ duties and blasts Charli XCX and Chappell Roan throughout the studio.

Sometimes parenting, however, means tough love. For example, she’s made sure her son Ryder is well aware of what will be required of him if he moves home after college. “He's like, ‘I got to figure out what my life is going to look like and how I’m going to achieve the things that I want to achieve and how I can live,’” she says. “I think you should be teaching your kids those things way earlier on so that when they get to that point, they’re not like, ‘Oh my God, how do I afford my life and not lean on my family?’”

On the surface, there are more than a few parallels between the Hudson-Russell brood and Running Point’s Gordon children. Both were raised by giants of their respective industries, and many of the siblings chose to join the family business long before “nepo baby” was a thing. (Oliver Hudson and Wyatt Russell, the two siblings she grew up with in the Hawn-Russell household, are both actors.) But, she insists, the conflict viewers see on screen couldn’t be further from Hudson’s own home life.

“The Gordons are like, ‘How do you really love someone properly?’ They grew up with a raging narcissist, misogynist [as a father], and the connection between the siblings is so challenging because they never had a good example of connectivity,” she says, before pausing to read a text from one of her kids.

“At the end of the day, our family is what matters in life,” she continues. “From my brothers, to my nephews and nieces, to my sister-in-laws, to my mom, my dad, to my partner, his brothers. I think that’s where the real kind of self-possessed nature comes from.”

“The best part about sex in your 40s, honestly, is the freedom. Sex isn’t supposed to be pretty. When you get older you kind of have more fun with that.”

Hudson does share at least one quality with Isla Gordon: the conviction to bet on herself time and time again. In 2013, she was one of the first celebrities of her generation to go out on a limb in the business world, co-founding Fabletics. (Some bristled at Hudson’s involvement in a subscription-based athleisure brand… until the rumors hit that its value could be upward of $5 billion). There was the Glorious leap last year — something she’d wanted to try for ages despite being told she was “too old” to try. And it’s no small thing to hold out for years to join her A-list peers on TV, until she found just the right role that embraced both her sure-footed sex appeal as well as her fall-flat-on-your-face brand of comedy. (Just wait for the scene that involves a romantic overture gone wrong with her co-star Chet Hanks.)

That’s not to say that Hudson never experiences struggles or self-doubt. “God, you’d be a sociopath if you just had the confidence to walk into anything or be fearless in everything,” she says. It’s just that, in those moments, she doesn’t try to shy away from discomfort. Hudson’s super power lies in her ability to take everything life throws her way in stride. “Everybody’s different in what your challenges are,” she says, shaking her head playfully. “We say challenges, not weaknesses — even though they feel like weakness sometimes.”

As our interview winds down, it’s clear as day, even under corporate lights: Hudson’s eternal sunshine burns too bright to be dimmed. “Let’s be honest, I’m a star sign person. I’m an Aries, and we’re the people that if you want to go have a good time, you’re like, ‘Hey, are you down?’ We’re like, ‘Yes,’” Hudson says, grinning like… Kate Hudson. Especially if, say, a locker room’s worth of men and their bulging biceps are what’s on the menu. “I mean, on this set I was like, ‘How lucky am I? This is not difficult.’”

Top Image credits: Chanel jacket and shoes, The Society Archive shorts, Calzedonia socks