Kate Hudson had to come out of her shell for her scene-stealing turn in Max Minghella‘s TIFF-selected dark comedy “Shell.”
The feature, which was written and directed by Minghella and is led his “Handmaid’s Tale” co-star Elisabeth Moss, marks Minghella’s sophomore feature after his 2018 directorial debut “Teen Spirit.”
For Hudson, working with longtime family friend Minghella helped push her into the territory of camp onscreen. Hudson plays a guru-adjacent beauty cosmetics company CEO who enlists an aging actress (Moss) as a client. However, the company has a dark secret…
Kaia Gerber, Arian Moayed, Este Haim, and Elizabeth Berkley also star.
“When you’re making movies, you’re sort of reliant on [director] Max for the tone,” Hudson said of channeling her onscreen alter-ego of CEO Zoe during a recent conversation with IndieWire. “You’re sort of like, ‘How far do I go here? How much do I lean into the comedy or the thriller aspect of it?’ Those are always fun because you’re really working very closely with the director. It’s not like you’re on your own. It’s really his tonal vision and so, like any actor or like any hired gun, you’re really in it with them. Max is such a loving and supportive director.”
Hudson added that while she “always have a tendency to go more subtle” as an actress, certain scenes required an all-out “silly” performance.
“There’s moments where they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, you can go way bigger,’ and I’m like, ‘Really? OK, here I go,’” Hudson said. “Usually my tendency is to be more realistic. The film never takes itself too seriously, even though it has big themes. I got to be super camp in this sort of dream and desire to stay young forever, and like the desire to hold on to that, even if it’s destructive. It just feels like a very relatable thing to most women and what they’re being sold all the time, you know. So it’s fun to kind of like play into those themes definitely.”
Hudson added of her writer/director, “[Max] wanted to make something that was fun and didn’t really fit into a genre but still kind of has that popcorn feeling to it. And yet at the same time, it can fit into a piece of art which is a very hard thing to be able to do. I appreciated his ambition.”
Hudson also admired Minghella’s cinephile background: His father is “The English Patient” Oscar winner Anthony Minghella.
“He loves film. I knew his father, and he obviously comes from such a wonderful film family, as I do,” Hudson said, with her parents being Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. “I think there’s a sort of a connection there in terms of growing up with storytellers and understanding the business so well. We really just connected. I think he’s got a great point of view. He loves to make movies and he loves the opportunity to make something fun for people, which I really appreciated.”
And both of Minghella and Hudson’s respective Hollywood heritages led to an unexpected parallel with “Shell.” Minghella has stated in the press notes that “Look Who’s Talking” and “Death Becomes Her” were inspirations for the script. Of course, Hudson’s mother Hawn famously co-led “Death Becomes Her” with Meryl Streep. The film is also having a cultural resurgence, with Sabrina Carpenter’s music video “Taste” co-starring Jenna Ortega and Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes wower body horror film “The Substance” drawing comparisons to the 1992 feature.
Does Hudson agree?
“No, no, not really. Although, I mean, I love that movie so much but no,” Hudson said when asked if “Shell” was a modern take on “Death Becomes Her” and if it was discussed with Hawn. “It’s clear anything that has anything to do with staying young forever will always come back that movie that we love so much. Everyone always asks me if I’m actually doing ‘Death Becomes Her.’ And I’m like, I didn’t think I was but I mean, [everyone is] doing ‘Death Becomes Her.’”
Hudson also shrugged off those who compared her larger-than-life, Goop-esque influencer character to her turn in “Knives Out: Glass Onion.” Both characters are selling something, even if one is more nefarious than the other.
“I’m not the biggest fan of the word influencer,” Hudson said. “I like saying that because I think it is a real word that is an important word for this generation. When you look at what artists and writers in the movie world, I feel like that’s one of the reasons why a lot of times this becomes a subject in these movies is because the introduction of an influencer, or someone who’s considered influential through whatever they do, is like the opposite of people who make art. People who make art aren’t trying to influence anyone. They’re not trying to sell anybody anything. They’re trying to make something powerful, right? They’re trying to be subversive or provocative. Influencers are trying to sell you something.”
She continued, “And by the way, it’s great job to have because people can make a lot of money doing that. But I think that that’s what’s so fun about playing those kinds of parts, and why a lot of writers and really wonderful artists like to write about them, is because it’s sort of consumed the last decade.”
The process of working on a film like “Shell” allowed for Hudson to embrace her “imaginative and childlike mind” as an actress.
“I think anybody who chooses to be a storyteller and a creative is always trying to hold on to that,” Hudson said about internal youth, compared to the premise of “Shell” with an outward agelessness. “There’s always moments where you’re like, ‘God, this is what we do for a living,’ especially when it’s as silly as what we were experiencing.”
Filming the final sequence of “Shell,” which may or may not involve a few crustaceans, was a production highlight for Hudson, especially sharing it with her co-star Moss.
“It just looks so crazy that Lizzie and I were just laughing so hard going,” Hudson said. “It was hard to keep a straight face because some of these things were so crazy. We have footage that I can’t wait to share. I have it on my iPhone. I have a video of how we actually shot that scene at the very end and it’s just so crazy and those are the moments in your life where you’re working and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is, this is what I do for a living. Like, this is crazy. This is wild that we get to do this for a living. We’re just so lucky.’”
Read the IndieWire review for “Shell” here. The film is being sold for the U.S. by WME and CAA, as well as Black Bear for international markets.
