Deepwater Horizon a family affair for Hudson
Multi-tasking star even got a chance to work with famous step-dad in Deepwater Horizon
Kate Hudson is an entrepreneur and an actress but she’s never all business.
The easygoing mom of two boys is obsessed about her activewear company, Fabletics, and promoting her bestselling self-help book, Pretty Happy: Healthy Ways to Love Your Body.
The 37-year-old also co-stars in the Peter Berg film Deepwater Horizon, which recounts the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster off the Louisiana coast.
In the disaster picture, she plays Felicia, the wife of Mike Williams (played by Mark Wahlberg), one of the oil rig’s chief technicians. Hudson’s stepfather, Kurt Russell, plays rig boss Jimmy Harrell.
Hudson talks to Postmedia about her latest movie and her career adjustments:
Q How did you manage to be so natural as Wahlberg’s wife?
A (Berg) allows you a certain amount of freedom to improvise, so we took advantage of it. It helped us take our guards down.
Q Anything else?
A Well, I am very open and I think (Wahlberg) and I are nicely connected. And luckily we got along right away. There is never a guarantee. Q Are most of your bedroom sequences improvised? A Everything we were doing, like when I put my feet up on (Wahlberg), was part of that. We immediately felt comfortable because we both got into it.
Q What do you have in common?
A We both have kids and we’ve been in relationships, and we both know how it feels. There is a certain energy associated with being in a good relationship.
Q Was there pressure to get the chemistry right?
A Yeah, we knew we had to capture that in a short period of time. If you don’t care about the characters at first, you won’t have as much invested in how things turn out.
Q Do you agree there was a convincing bond between your step-dad Russell and Wahlberg?
A Oh yeah. Those were strong moments between them in the movie.
Q Why do they work so well together?
A They’re both honest, relatable actors. They understand who they are and they understand the world of a working man. And neither of them have an interest in being validated.
Q Did your stepfather recommend you for the wife role?
A Oh, no. I’ve known (Berg) since I was 17. He was a friend of a friend and then he became part of our family, in a way.
Q Were you glad to see you had a scene with Russell?
A Yeah, it would be hilarious if we didn’t even get to be in a scene together. And then we did, and then afterward I was thinking it wouldn’t make the final cut. But it did.
Q Was it fun acting opposite him?
A I look forward to working with Dad again. I mean really working with him. Q Are you being more selective these days about your roles? A I don’t look at it that way. My career hasn’t been that calculated.
Q So why are you doing fewer films?
A Now that I am having success in other areas, my life takes focus on different things. If a movie is going to take me away from my friends and family and kids, I really have to want to make the movie.
Q How’s the arrangement working out?
A It’s great. The last thing I want is to be on a set at 5:30 in the morning and ask myself, ‘What am I doing here when I could be taking my kids to school?’