To All the Johns (and a Jason) I’ve Loved Before

By Kate Hudson | Celebrity | September 1, 2018 |

By Kate Hudson | Celebrity | September 1, 2018 |

The news, in scientific terms, is kind of yucky today. People.com doesn’t have anything delightfully dumb on their homepage, and it’s Labor Day weekend, which means everyone’s out having babies in the cabbage patch waiting for the stork to come. I tried to come up with something noteworthy to write about, but all that ended up happening was I spent the past thirty minutes looking at pictures of Jason Statham (time well spent.)

via GIPHY

You always remember your first celebrity crushes, and while Jason Statham is hot (a universal truth) he certainly wasn’t my first celebrity crush. That distinction belongs to Jonathan Knight, who I’ve carried a torch for since 1988 when New Kids on the Block released Hanging Tough. Granted, I was pretty young, so it was a very innocent crush (I really wanted him to be my bus driver so we could solve mysteries on our way to and from school …it made sense at the time.)

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A post shared by New Kids On The Block (@nkotb) on Jan 11, 2018 at 1:10pm PST

Jonathan, or Jon as I liked to think he’d let me call him, was the quiet, shy New Kid who loved horses. Less flashy than Jordan or Joey, at the time I felt he was being left out of the conversation when it came to best New Kid, and since he was so sensitive, it hurt his feelings. So I carried the torch hard for him, although secretly. My brothers were jerks about NKOTB and would mock them constantly, so to the world, Jordan was my favorite, but in my heart it was Jon. It will always be Jon.

The second crush came around the same time when the Disney Channel would play The Journey of Natty Gan frequently, which co-starred a young, super dreamy John Cusack.

Who doesn’t want to travel across America with a wolf and John Cusack by their side? Full disclosure, I had no idea who John Cusack was at the time—this was pre-internet, so the crush was focused around the character, not the actor. Since John Cusack wasn’t in the habit of making the type of movies I was allowed to watch back then, it would be almost a decade before I discovered who ‘John Cusack’ was when he reignited his career around 1997. I made up for lost time at 13 when I hosted many slumber party “Cusack-a-thons” and forced my friends who were less enthusiastic about him to watch some of his deep cuts. I’m sure they thank me for it now.

After two Johns, there had to be a Jason. There’s always a Jason, and mine was Bateman circa The Hogan Family.

God bless him, this was on every day after school, and I’d never miss an episode. Being a Bateman in the late eighties/early nineties meant that you were basically everywhere—so it was a good time to like one. I recall he’d frequently show up on the game show, Win, Lose or Draw, which would air right after The Hogan Family. Those days were particularly good ones.

In the intervening years, my horizons broadened greatly. There were more Johns, Jasons, and even a ‘Rock’ thrown in for good measure, but you always remember your first crushes. Time marches on, Cusack turned 52 in June. The others are turning 50 within a matter of months. To me, they’re forever 19.

Share your first celebrity crushes in the comments below but be prepared to defend yourself if it was Danny from New Kids on the Block. He’s nobody’s favorite New Kid.