Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn had a mother-daughter night out at the movies on Tuesday night, as the pair sat down for a conversation around Hudson’s buzzy performance in Song Sung Blue.
Hawn kicked off the 30-minute chat by telling the crowd at The Grove how she and longtime partner Kurt Russell “held onto each other and cried” when they first saw the movie. She later revealed that Russell “went to the bathroom and came back because he was a little weepy himself and he said, ‘She might be the greatest actress of all time,’” of Hudson’s performance, while also joking that “Kurt and I just got along better, for the first time in our life” after watching the movie.
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“You’re welcome,” Hudson teased, as Hawn replied, “Honey, you help our marriage work!”
The film stars Hudson and Hugh Jackman as down-on-their-luck performers who fall in love and form a Neil Diamond tribute band, with Jackman’s character becoming stepfather to her children. Hudson noted that was “something very relatable to us,” as Russell and Hawn got together after she already had two children.
“That’s what Kurt did, came into my life and took on our family,” Hawn said, as Hudson echoed, “It’s a heroic thing to do.”
The conversation also touched on the way that Hawn and Russell raised their kids, with Hudson noting, “You instilled discipline in me and I think it feels sometimes from the outside, like maybe if you grow up with parents like you and Pa, that it’s sort of an easy thing. But you actually were the opposite parents; it was like, ‘This is a craft, you have to take this seriously,’” and as a result she was always in dance, theater and music classes growing up.
While Hudson is currently busy on the awards campaign trail, she asked Hawn how Hollywood today compares to when she was releasing nominated movies in the ’70s and ’80s.
“It was very different. Right now we have so many ways to see things, outlets. I don’t know where stars are anymore, to tell you the truth; real, real movie stars. I consider you one of them and there are some of them, I don’t mean to put anybody down. I’m just saying that there’s so much content out there that it’s very different. I don’t want to say diluted, but it’s not a bad word,” Hawn mused.
“You didn’t get to stay home, it was an event. That’s how I grew up, and that means when you do a comedy for instance, you hear a shitload of people laughing. You know how great that feels? You know how contagious that feels?” she continued of seeing movies in theaters. “When you see like in the old days, the big Clark Gables and Warren Beattys and Jack Nicholsons with that big smile; you don’t get the same hit [today]. So movie stars have become something of — it’s not quite as exciting. But boy back then, it was very exciting.”
Hudson teased back, “I guess then the moral of this is we need to get people back in the theaters,” as Hawn added, “I want to see more movies. I will see this one again and again because it fills me with so much joy and you shocked the hell out of me.”
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