Work created an island paradise
Kate Hudson says her keenly written character and the premier ensemble made ‘Glass Onion’ a blast to shoot.
KATE HUDSON’S résuméis notably eclectic, perhaps because the actress says she has never been very calculated about her career. If a role or a film felt right, she did it. These days, however, Hudson is more deliberate in her decision-making because starring in a movie means time away from her kids.
“It’s just changed,” she says, speaking by phone a few days ahead of the “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” premiere on Netflix. “I just want to work with really, really interesting and great filmmakers. I want to work with people that inspire me. That’s where I’m at right now — if they’ll have me! There’s no crystal ball, but I do want to play interesting characters with people that I admire.”
A few years ago, Hudson got a call from one of those people, writer-director Rian Johnson. He had written a role in “Glass Onion,” a sequel to 2019’s whodunit “Knives Out,” that seemed right for her: a vapid model-turned-fashion-designer named Birdie Jay who is part of a group of friends brought to a private island by billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). The character, who is equal parts compelling and obnoxious, like the worst kind of popular influencer, struck Hudson immediately.
“The second I read the film and knew the universe Rian was thinking about, I felt like, ‘I’ve got to bulldoze Rian’s door down,’ ” she says, laughing. “We talked and shared a lot about the character, and then he asked if I’d do a work session, and I said, ‘Of course, always.’ And that was that. The script was so fantastic, and Birdie just popped off the page. I just don’t see characters like that very often that are so well crafted and give you these big notes to play. But at the same time, because he’s such a great writer, it’s more layered and nuanced than I normally see with comedic roles.”
Hudson says she prepares extensively for every role she takes on, creating a back story for the character if the script doesn’t. She wants to feel spontaneous on the day of filming, so it’s important to have built a full scope of who the person is ahead of time. For
Birdie, an insecure but entitled character, a lot of what the actor needed was already there on the written page.
“The whole thing for Birdie, for me, was why she was so tactile,” Hudson says. “When I read it, I realized, ‘Oh, she touches everybody.’ I could see the physicality of it. There was one particular stage direction [that] indicated to me that she’s someone who is always either touching someone or getting someone’s attention or in someone’s space. She has no sense of other people’s bubbles. So I had to get into why she’s like that. That was really great for me with her because I think that’s a big key to, hopefully, what makes Birdie not so despicable. She does such despicable things, but hopefully when you see how ignorant she can be [you see] it’s coming from a place of need.”
Birdie’s sense of movement was essential for Hudson, who drew on her dance background to get it right. In fact, besides “Nine,” being a former dancer helped her more on this film than anything prior.
“We all know people like this,” Hudson says of Birdie. “Plenty of people that I’ve met, and especially women, constantly have to be at the center of what everybody’s looking at. They need to take the eyes of the room onto them. That happens a lot in movement, right? How people lean on to somebody or what they do when they go to help someone or how they insert themselves to be the center of attention. With her, I felt like everything was a dance move.”
Hudson says Johnson wrote the partyloving Birdie with such nuanced detail that it wasn’t necessary to look outward for inspiration. Instead, she focused on bringing what was on the page to life.
“There’s this ‘Rian tone’ that he brought to the genre,” Hudson notes. “He has a very specific tone, and it’s a fun thing to play, because it’s challenging. It’s broad and it’s always grounded .... For me, what was interesting is that I’d do things I’d think were huge and big. And he’d say, ‘You can go bigger.’ We would all laugh, like ‘Bigger?!’ And he’d say, ‘Go for it.’ So the tone was always a little tricky, but then after the first couple of weeks, you really start to understand the language that he speaks in ‘Knives Out.’ ”
On set in Greece last summer, Hudson felt real camaraderie with her fellow cast members, who included Norton, Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn and Dave Bautista. Everyone loved the work, she says, which may explain why “Glass Onion” is such a riotous good time to watch.
“When you have a moment like that, which happens few and far between, you remember, ‘Oh, yeah, we do this because every once in a while you get that magic time,’” Hudson says. “That’s what this movie felt like for a lot of us .... I really shy away from expectations, especially in Hollywood. But I knew we were all enjoying the work so much and enjoying Rian’s vision and having a blast with it. The hope is that it translates exactly how it felt onto the screen.”