Kate Hudson Returns to the Oscars Race, 25 Years After ‘Almost Famous’: “You’re Always Only One Part Away”
SOURCE:Hollywood Reporter|BY:David Canfield
The 'Song Sung Blue' star is up for best-actress honors at the Golden Globes and Actor Awards, and as she tells The Hollywood Reporter over martinis and sourdough, is having a ball: “It's like, ‘Me time!’ I'm doing this for myself.”
“Are we having a cocktail?” The way Kate Hudson slides into our corner table at Hollywood’s Sunset Tower Bar with an ebullient, slightly mischievous grin implies she’s already answered her own question. Wearing a sleek black turtleneck, the actress is on a break between industry Q&A panels for her Oscar-contending film, Song Sung Blue, running on what seems to be a campaign adrenaline rush. She’s eager for a drink. “We’re both going to do martinis,” she orders. “I’m going to do a Chopin straight-up, super cold, super dirty, blue cheese olives.” I ask for my drink a little more basic, with a twist. “That’s like my brother,” she says with a laugh.
Hudson appears in a celebratory mood. The 46-year-old star has been on the circuit for the last few months in support of Song Sung Blue, which has offered her a rare prestige-showcase role and her first shot at an Oscar nomination since her breakout part from 25 years ago, in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. Already, she’s up for best actress in a musical/comedy at this Sunday’s Golden Globes, and just received a key lead-actress nod from the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards) on Wednesday. “When you’re younger and this happens, there’s a different feeling to it — it’s more of a shock entrance, or invitation, into this world,” Hudson says. “But when you’ve been in it for 26 years — I was 19, acting in AlmostFamous — it’s a completely different relationship to the kindness and outpouring of positivity. It feels just so warm. It’s a very nice feeling, and also inspiring. It gets me excited about the things moving forward that I want to be doing.”
Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
I first met Hudson a few years ago, as she made the rounds for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, all but stealing the Netflix mystery film with a brashly comic supporting performance. That felt like a turning point for her, after she’d spent years slowing down her acting career due to a lack of offers outside of her established lane — that of broad rom-coms, which she came to dominate in the aughts following Almost Famous. “My last agent — he’s since quit the agent world — said, ‘I don’t know why I get more upset about the parts you don’t get than you do,’” Hudson says now. “But I’ve never personally felt underestimated. I understand how the business works. You’re always only one part away from the experience reinvigorating itself.” If Glass Onion, which came from an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and was stacked with a decorated cast, set her on that course, then has marked a kind of destination.
Not that it sounded that way on paper. The movie tells the true story of amateur musicians Mike (Hugh Jackman) and Claire (Hudson) Sardina, who meet and fall in love at the Wisconsin State Fair before forming the Neil Diamond tribute duo Lightning and Thunder — and rise to improbable success. “There was a real risk — for me it was like, this could either be really great, or go really wrong,” Hudson says. The film takes a tragic turn at its midpoint when Claire is severely injured after getting hit by a car in her front yard. Hudson’s performance kicks into a surprising dramatic gear, the actress’s playful Milwaukee accent settling into a relatively somber key, grappling with dreams dashed.
“My mom is so funny — she has a hard time even talking about my performance in this movie without crying,” says Hudson, referring of course to parent and fellow actor Goldie Hawn. “When you’re close to someone, it must be hard to see them go through all the things I did.” Hudson, for her part, felt liberated. Previously unwilling to leave her three kids for an extended period of time for work, this time she gave herself the permission, with support from her partner, Danny Fujikawa.
“I’ve been a mom since I was 23 — I had [my oldest child] Ryder really young, and I’ve had kids my whole adult life — and here my daughter was turning six and it was the first time I didn’t have a really very young child, and I was able to work on my craft,” Hudson says. She’d leave for two and a half weeks, come back for a weekend, and rinse and repeat: “It makes me think about mothers who make these decisions to leave their family to go make movies like this. It takes a lot. You need to give yourself permission to be okay not being 100 percent present for them for 100 percent of the day.”
Hudson with Hugh Jackman Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
Hudson has, in many ways, been working toward this project for her whole career. As acting took a backseat some years ago, she started pursuing music professionally — long a dream of hers — for the first time, releasing the album Glorious in 2024. Director Craig Brewer and Jackman saw her singing on a CBS morning show, a key moment in the decision to cast her in the part. She gained weight for the role, played around with her real hair to capture Claire’s unique look, and noticed during filming how she felt different than on past projects. Some major successes happened between her breakout and this moment, but it has still felt full-circle — particularly in the awards-campaigning department.
“It’s a pretty interesting reflection at 46, realizing I left high school, I got Almost Famous, and then I got pregnant and had a baby and had kids really fast,” Hudson says. “The campaigning is extensive and exciting now, but it’s been a long time — it’s changed a lot since Almost Famous — and I am surprised by how many things there are to do.” She speaks of her commitment to the Oscars circuit not unlike her commitment to the character in Song Sung Blue: “It’s been kind of nice. It’s like, ‘Me time!’ I’m doing this for myself.” Hudson has heard from studio heads, producers and other past collaborators praising her work. “It really does feel humbling,” she says. “But I was saying to my mom the other day, ‘People talk about age and I don’t even think about it.’ I don’t think about time backwards. I don’t long for anything behind me. I don’t know if it’s just my nature, but my mom’s very similar.”
Song Sung Blue Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
As a bread basket hits our table — Hudson first goes for the sourdough, buttering slices between martini sips — we get into the highs and lows of Song Sung Blue’s post-release period. As to the latter: The film has been subject to sharp backlash from Sardina’s real-life son, Mike Jr., who called it “all lies” to the Daily Mail and criticized Hudson and Jackman for not contacting him in the making of the movie. (He was paid as a consultant, but does not appear as a character in the film, unlike other Sardina children.) “Honestly, I don’t even know — out of respect for our filmmakers, I’m not the right person to speak to it,” Hudson says of the situation. She did speak with the real-life Claire, in any case: “I’m so happy that I got to know Claire, who’s such a wonderful woman, and she’s so happy with the movie.”
And when it comes to the highs: Song Sung Blue has emerged as a sleeper theatrical success story since its Christmas launch, dropping less than 20 percent in its second weekend and pulling in spectacular reactions. The Focus Features release has a verified Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 97 percent, 20 points higher than its critics’ rating, demonstrating impressive word of mouth around the country. This has fueled Hudson’s awards bid, and also emerged as a bright light for midbudget movies at the box office. (It’s grossed north of $30 million worldwide.) With her performance in conversation with those of One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and other movies vying for eyeballs on the big-screen, Hudson views this as the primary power and value of the modern Oscars machine.
“It’s exciting to see people’s fight for this — not as much about them and their chances as it is for getting people in the theater,” Hudson says. “When people stand on the precipice of something that could be a lost art, like the cinema experience, it does change the way you think about it. You cannot take it for granted. It makes you lean in even more — or at least it has for me. It’s like, ‘Oh right, this art form actually, really matters.’ But you’re always fighting commerce — art and commerce are an awful marriage.”
Song Sung Blue was rejected by more than a dozen studios before Focus stepped in. “You realize that there’s always an uphill battle in every choice that you really believe in and has to be made,” Hudson says. Last I saw her, she had told me about a few rom-coms she was developing and set to produce; in the years since, there’s been no news on those, and she admits to feeling generally discouraged by the climate, though she isn’t giving up on them. Indeed, her splashy Netflix series vehicle Running Point marks her only producing credit in the past decade.
“The reason why I stopped doing it and didn’t want to do it anymore is because it took everything out of me — it’s a constant battle,” she says.
But today, as on most days, Hudson conveys a sunny if hard-fought enthusiasm. She raves about Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve and One Battle After Another’s Paul Thomas Anderson — “PTA might be my favorite of the generation above me, he is my number one, his movies defined my childhood” — and wonders whether she should start putting out “my own takes on movies — all positive.” I remind her that she hosts a podcast, Sibling Revelry, with her brother Oliver — so she’s got the platform.
Hudson’s drink is not yet finished, but she has to get going soon for her next Q&A of the night, to be moderated by her old Glass Onion director, Rian Johnson. “I’m so excited to see him,” she says. “But I want to stay and have another cocktail!” Sadly, as she’s learning, this awards business is pretty full-on. She gets up and heads toward her car out front, beaming as the evening rages on, and leaving behind a proudly empty martini glass.
