Kate Hudson teased Jimmy Kimmel Live viewers on Friday that she was just minutes away from giving them a glimpse of stepfather Kurt Russell taking a nap. Hudson was doing the remote guest thing in Russell’s room and Goldie Hawn’s mother, and he swore to Kimmel that she tried to keep Russell hibernating in the painting, but unfortunately, we were not treated to the sight of a crumpled Kurt Russell snoring in the background. You can’t have everything.
Still, Hudson was there to talk about his recent Golden Globe nomination (she won by Almost famous in 2001), for singing and acting in Sia’s unexpectedly controversial new film, Song. The story of a neuroatypical young woman healed by the “power of love” (and probably by Sia’s music, sung by singers like Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr.), Song drew this controversy through the choice of neurotypical actress Maddie Ziegler, debuting director Sia, to play her main character, a nonverbal woman with autism. And while Sia did not exactly cover herself with grace and glory with her atonal defensive / abusive responses to criticism from members of the autistic community (and others who think filmmakers should really have learned about acting by this point), Hudson was relatively quiet about it when Kimmel brought it up.
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“Nobody really asked me that,” said Kimmel’s Hudson, raising the question, and the actress was willing to have the discussion that she said was the right and necessary one. “It is not a sonic conversation,” said Hudson, “I think it is an important and ongoing dialogue about neurotypical actors playing neurodivergent characters.” See, Sia – not that difficult. Hudson even led Kimmel back to this delicate terrain when, at one point, the host mentioned her Golden Globe nomination, explaining: “I feel terrible”, that members of the neuroatypical audience were harmed by the choice of the casting director. (Hudson, however, did not enter into Sia’s widely ridiculed irritation about that community daring to question her artistic choices, only agreeing with Kimmel that Sia is a “lovable” person.)
Kimmel, who has been as vocal in his support for the autistic community (he told Hudson that he has autism in his own family) as he has been blunt in his mockery of antivaxxers who have blamelessly blamed autism on life-saving vaccines, maintained that frontal and central dialogue throughout the last half of the interview, with Hudson gently explaining his own desire to listen. There was a “Hey, I just work here” touch on Hudson’s analysis of the problem, but at least, unlike some people involved in Songof the production, she did not get involved cursing – and in one case, insulting – the same people she claimed to be trying to represent on the screen. (Or kind of apologizing and then deleting your social media.) Anyway, Song is playing on VOD and some IMAX cinemas now.