Oliver Hudson on realising the world would see mum Goldie Hawn’s boobs
Actor Oliver Hudson grew up in Hollywood but some things are uncomfortable regardless of your pedigree, like knowing the world could see his mother Goldie Hawn’s boobs on the big screen in her 1986 film Wildcats.
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While his law-enforcement character in The Cleaning Lady will stop at nothing in the name of justice – including putting the lives of a mother and son in peril – Oliver Hudson holds families in the highest regard in real life. After all, as a member of the Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell acting clan, he does projects with his parents, hosts a podcast with sister Kate, and guides his own children as they follow their own creativity. But one thing he doesn’t do is take his Hollywood opportunities for granted. As Hudson tells The Binge Guide, “There is an expectation when you walk in the door.”
Over the years, Oliver Hudson has turned down many exciting, big-budget projects because they would take too much time away from his wife, Erinn Bartlett, and their three kids: Wilder, 15, Bodhi, 12, and Rio, 9.
The LA-based actor even hesitated before signing up for his latest project – playing FBI agent Garrett Miller in crime drama The Cleaning Lady – because it films in New Mexico. But when the creators agreed to adjust his shooting schedule to more family-friendly hours, he was all in.
Hudson says he became invested in the high-stakes storylines of the addictive Foxtel thriller, which centres on Thony De La Rosa (Elodie Yung), a Cambodian-Filipino surgeon who is forced to do some very bad things for some very bad people in the US for one very good reason: her son.
“My kids are my entire life,” he tells The Binge Guide. “If your child is in a life-or-death situation, of course you do anything, and I would break the law as long as I’m not hurting anybody else.
“But if it means potentially saving the life of my child, then yeah, at that point, morals might go out the window a little bit because now it’s just survival mode.”
Away from The Cleaning Lady set, Hudson lives within a stone’s throw of his childhood home in Hollywood, and his younger siblings, actors Kate Hudson and Wyatt Russell.
Unfortunately, their hectic schedules mean they’re often working in separate corners of the globe.
“Everyone is all over the place, so it’s not that sort of Sunday dinner type of a vibe,” he says. “But we’re very loyal and very close. I just wish we had more time with each other.
“But it works. And it’s how we’ve grown up, understanding that you might not always be together physically all the time, but [the love] runs so deep [so] it doesn’t really matter.”
Coming from a famous clan – his mother is Goldie Hawn, and he calls her longtime partner Kurt Russell his “Pa” – could be a double-edged sword.
Hudson’s family friend Gwyneth Paltrow – herself the daughter of late director Bruce Paltrow and actor Blythe Danner – has pointed out that the offspring of celebrities must work far harder to prove themselves.
But laid-back Hudson shrugs it off. “There are actors who work their ass off just to get to LA and then keep working their asses off to just get a sh**ty agent,” he reflects.
“So I don’t think those who’ve been handed the silver spoon understand anything of those real challenges.
“There is an expectation when you walk in the door. But we don’t just get one foot in the door; it’s two because you come from a lineage.
“And because of that, they’ve given you an opportunity, but then they’re watching you going, ‘OK, so his sister has won a Golden Globe, his parents are major movie stars – let’s see what he can do.’”
All three of Hudson’s children have shown interest in joining the family business, which has seen their father land roles in Dawson’s Creek, Rules Of Engagement, Nashville and Scream Queens. (He and Hawn were also in Russell’s 2018 film The Christmas Chronicles.)
But he admits that the novelty of seeing each other’s work has inevitably worn a little thin.
“I’m not sure Kate has watched anything I’ve done except Nashville,” he says with a laugh. “I think she got into that.
“She hasn’t watched The Cleaning Lady. So it kind of varies, but I have watched everything my parents do.”
And that has led to some uncomfortable moments.
“There was a time [when] my mom did a movie called Wildcats,” he recalls, “and there’s a scene where her ex-husband comes into the bathroom and she’s in the bath.
“So she’s in the water and she’s got no top on and I remember as a kid going, ‘Oh my God!’
“Nowadays though, it’s totally different. I mean, who cares? But as a kid, I remember thinking, Oh my God, everyone’s going to see my mom’s boobs.”
While he has yet to act alongside his famous siblings, Hudson has found other ways to work with them.
He and Kate have their own podcast, Sibling Revelry, in which they talk to other celebrity brothers and sisters about their dynamics.
Of their own quirks, Hudson says Kate is both the stricter parent and the one who insists he is Hawn’s favourite child.
Teasing each other, he explains, “is how we show love, not just with my family, but with anyone close to me.
“If I’m on your ass finding ways to embarrass you or rip you apart a little bit,” Hudson says, “then I’m fond of you.”
Series two of The Cleaning Lady premieres at 5pm this Tuesday on Foxtel On Demand.
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