It’s common to hear that we are in a rom-com resurgence, which is bringing some joy to the streaming wars. But it’s a new kind of rom-com that is slightly less blonde. It’s not the marquee movie stars like Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, and Kate Hudson making these movies and the new style of rom-com feels a bit scrappier.
And while Cameron is semi-retired and Reese is busy on a multitude of projects, Kate is somewhat of an anomaly. Her career has undoubtedly gone through a slump (her IMDb page is a series of “huh?” choices, like Deepwater Horizon and Rock the Kasbah). Studios stopped banking on popcorn movies with her, even though her contemporaries (like Matthew McConaughey) were able to reinvent their careers, it doesn’t seem like Kate ever found her Dallas Buyers Club. Or maybe she found it too early in her career with Almost Famous. She never quite captured that combination of a great performance in a prestigious film again.
But even as the acting lulled, her career didn’t. Kate Hudson goes to everything. You will see her on red carpets, photographed at parties, active on social media and working her side hustles that are now her main hustle: Fabletics (which has been around since 2013), then Happy x Nature, and also her gig with Weight Watchers, plus a podcast with her brother and various smaller partnerships with brands. She might not be on set as much but she stays paid.
And like Drew Barrymore, her choices are getting broader. She’s entered into the spirits market with vodka, King St. Vodka.
Spirits are a huge category for celebs and in her caption, Kate writes about being unsatisfied with the options on her bar cart and wondering if any of the labels were founded by women. (I can’t verify her claim – a quick Google search brings up vodka companies owned by women, and here is a Forbes story on a female-owned cocktail collective in the US.) Kate might not have owned one of those brands, but they exist.
But every celebrity who goes into the spirits and wine business has the same reasoning: I can’t find anything I like or want to drink. They certainly aren’t going to say they are going into it because they want to make bank like George Clooney did. Kate probably looked at the numbers, wanted in, and chose vodka because wine is quite saturated and very competitive.
Her new brand, King St., is named for a street she lived on in New York. The label is floral. It’s craft (a designation given based on how much is produced, not how it’s produced) and distilled 7 times (for reference, Grey Goose is distilled 5 times). But what’s really going to sell this stuff is Kate’s sparkle, her ability to tie it into her happy, easy-breezy image that she has cultivated so well over the years. And it’s natural to use that brand and tie it into hosting – she says she is always the host with her friends.
To add to the workout leggings and meal plans, she’s marketing a martini with Kate Hudson. It’s a pretty easy sell.
Attached - Kate Hudson at the Baby2Baby Gala in LA earlier this week.
