In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and senior editor Vinnie Mancuso for this guide to living the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
Kate Hudson occupies a lot of roles in people’s minds: the radiant breakout of Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous”; a cornerstone of early aughts rom-coms like “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”; a well-earned Golden Globe and Actor Award nominee thanks to her transformative turn in Craig Brewer’s “Song Sung Blue”; and, of course, Hollywood royalty, raised by her mother Goldie Hawn and Hawn’s long-time partner Kurt Russell. But the image of the actor as an effortlessly charming screen presence is a bit at odds with the fact that Kate Hudson does the work.
“The thing that people don’t know about me and my family is… From the outside in, it just feels fun and enjoyable. And, yeah, we get to do all these amazing and fun roles, and Kurt gets to, you know, go meet Godzilla. But we actually take the job very seriously,” Hudson tells us on the latest episode of In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast. “I remember as a little girl when I started declaring my desire to be an actress, the first thing my parents said is, ‘You realize this is an art form. There is a craft that is to be studied.’ ”
Hudson has been studying the craft since the beginning, taking part in the Williamstown Theatre Festival—the prestigious Massachusetts workshop that also launched names like Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn—and working regularly with go-to acting coaches like Larry Moss and Ivana Chubbuck. At one point, Hudson was set to attend the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts before pivoting to, as she calls it, “the University of Cameron Crowe.”
That became a staple of her education, learning from costars and collaborators instead of classrooms. The most reliable technique she’s picked up, she tells us, came from Russell. “The thing I stole from Kurt is he breaks down story, and his part and his character don’t matter,” she says.
“He reads his scripts over and over again. He scribbles everything. He sees holes in places that sometimes the director or writer don’t even see themselves. He fights for his ideas in the sense of, this will make the movie better. He’d cut himself out of half of a movie if it meant the story was better,” she continues. “That sort of selfless process of an actor to actually facilitate the story and work with the director and everybody to say, ‘Hey, maybe it would be better if I could do it this way,’ or ‘Maybe you don’t need me here.’ That’s what I learned from Kurt, is that when you get on set with someone, you start to really have a respect for each other and understand that we’re creating this world together, to really show up caring about what you’re doing, and not just phoning it in. It’s not my vision; I just facilitate it.”
On this episode, Hudson opens up about more lessons she’s learned from a lifetime in the industry, the emotional process of filming “Song Sung Blue,” and much, much more. Listen and subscribe to hear the full conversation:
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