Reese basking in Sunshine
AFEW months ago, Reese Witherspoon realised everything had changed. HBO’S glossy, sevenepisode drama Big Little Lies – which Witherspoon starred in and helped produce – won eight Emmy Awards, including the one for best limited series.
From the Microsoft
Theatre stage in Los Angeles on September 17, to swelling applause, Witherspoon spoke of how important it was to bring “women to the front of their own stories and make them the heroes of their own stories.”
Not long after that night, she found herself in demand.
“It opened a lot of doors for me,” she said last week. “People wanted to be in business with me as a producer in the TV space. My mission was to create television for other women, for other female storytellers who are actresses, other directors and writers. I think it just clicked in people’s minds.”
Last month, HBO ordered a second season of Big Little Lies, with Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, among the key companies behind the show. In addition, Apple has bought three Hello Sunshine projects as part of its push to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in streaming. That amounts to a third of Apple’s TV purchases to date.
One of the series – set to star Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston as hosts of a fictional morning news show – marks one of the most expensive deals in TV history. With a 20-episode commitment, Apple has pledged roughly $240million (about R2,85billion) to make it, according to two people familiar with the series. Witherspoon’s other two Apple projects will star Octavia Spencer and Kristen Wiig.
The rise of Hello Sunshine – with projects centred on strong, complicated women – is in sync with the #Timesup movement, which counts Witherspoon as a major player, and gives evidence that the risk-averse Hollywood establishment might have learned something from the blockbuster success of Wonder Woman last year.
“People are desperate for this kind of storytelling about female heroes who have always been in the shadows and now are coming into the light,” she said.
Witherspoon, 41, does not have the track record of super producers like Shanda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, who have created hit shows for more than a decade, but she has already put a lot of distance between herself and the pack of actors who run production boutiques as a hobby.
Rhimes, the hit-maker behind Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, who recently signed a deal with Netflix, called Witherspoon a “boots on the ground” producer.
“Reese has been very smart about what she wants to do,” Rhimes said. “She has leveraged her power in a smart way to get big projects. She knows what she’s doing.”
Witherspoon took control of her career by making a deeper commitment to producing.
An avid reader, she started optioning book after book, partly motivated by a conversation with her husband, Jim Toth, an agent at the Creative Artists Agency.
“I talked to my husband around that time, when the movies weren’t working for me,” she said. “And he said: ‘Are these movies you want to be making?’ And
I said: ‘No, I’m waiting for the scripts to come in.’
“And he said: ‘You don’t seem like the kind of person who sits around and waits for the phone to ring. You read more books than anybody I know, so why don’t you start making them into your own material?’
“And I thought about my mom, who said: ‘If you want something done, do it yourself,’” Witherspoon said.
Her previous production company, Pacific Standard, had hits with the 2014 movies Wild and Gone Girl. It came to an end in
2016 when Witherspoon split from her long-time producing partner, Bruna Papandrea.
Witherspoon sought outside investment when she was ready to start Hello Sunshine, striking a deal with Otter Media, a company owned by the Chernin Group and AT&T, which bought a 30% stake in her new production house.
In addition to the three Apple projects and Big Little Lies, Hello Sunshine has two potential series in the running at ABC and NBC. Several film projects are also in the works.
Witherspoon marvels at how the business is changing. A few years ago, she said, prospects were dim for actresses over the age of
40. She hopes she can help change that in her new role.
“It’s systemic, because the people who are writing the stories aren’t 40-year-old women. You write what you know. Well, there were no 40-year-old female screenwriters, and now women of colour are writing screenplays and getting them made at big studios.
“I’m as incredulous as everybody else,” she said. – The New York Times