Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 21, 2026
The Best Actress race this year is tough. You could fill those five slots out a few times and still miss out some worthy nominees. We’ve got Jessie Buckley, Renate Reinsve, Rose Byrne, Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Cynthia Erivo, Chase Infiniti, Amanda Seyfried, Eva Victor, and Tessa Thompson, to name but ten. Buckley and Byrne seem to be the frontrunners, as of the writing of this piece. Infiniti benefits from being the breakout star of the Best Picture frontrunner, and Stone is an old favourite in this category with two previous wins to her name. One actress garnering buzz and campaigning vigorously for a chance to be in that fifth slot? Kate Hudson.
Hudson stars in Song Sung Blue, a Craig Brewer-directed biopic about a couple who form Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond tribute act. It’s a very old-school kind of inspirational biopic, full of clunky dialogue, rousing montages, and musical numbers. If it was 1996, this would be the Best Picture frontrunner. As it is, it’s a warmly received throwback that probably won’t put a dent in One Battle After Another’s victory lap, but it might get Hudson her second Oscar nomination. She’s certainly fighting hard for it.
It’s easy to forget that Kate Hudson is an Oscar-nominated actress. For decades, she’s been a rom-com queen, leggings saleswoman, and podcasting with her brother, so her star-making turn as the iconic Penny Lane in Almost Famous ends up falling by the wayside. Read the coverage in the lead-up to that year’s ceremony and you’ll see a lot of people predicting she would be the victor in Best Supporting Actress at the grand age of 20. But then Marcia Gay Harden took it home for Pollock. Following this, Hudson decided to move into leading lady territory through romantic comedies, which was the primary means for an actress to establish herself as a bona fide star. Some of those movies were good. Many were not. And it became easy to dismiss Hudson. The work didn’t seem all that challenging and it rarely gave Hudson the chance to excel. But she remained in the spotlight through her Fabletics brand, various side hustles, and appearances on shows like Glee.
Over the past few years, however, things have looked brighter. She was a delightful ditz in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, she released her debut album, and she headlined the Netflix series Running Point, all of which made great use of her sparky charm and easy-going magnetism. Song Sung Blue is probably the meatiest movie role she’s had in over a decade (no, Sia’s Music doesn’t count.) Of course she has to take advantage of that.
From the moment the movie started getting buzz, Hudson jumped into action. She landed a glowing profile in Variety that talked up her ‘greatest role since Penny Lane’ and how she de-glammed to play a Midwestern mum. She was honoured at the Palm Springs Film Festival. She got a Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations, which bodes well for an Oscar shortlisting. Her mother, Goldie Hawn, hosted a recent screening for Hudson. You name a glitzy awards season party and Hudson is at it, probably looking stunning. Indeed, there may be no star fighting more aggressively for a nomination right now than she. She’s like if Dwayne Johnson actually had a shot at making the cut.
Song Sung Blue is not a great movie, and compared to other Best Actress showcases of the season, it lacks the heft and ambition that have kept Hudson’s competition in contention. But it is also a classic piece of corny middlebrow bait, and that’s still worth something in the age of One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme. We’ve seen how the Academy is forever drawn to this kind of wholesome, all-American fare: inspirational, unchallenging, biographical, and nostalgic. Plus, it’s full of boomer bait music that we’ve all 100% sung while drunk in a bar. What could be more appealing than that?
And for Hudson, she has the juicier role of the two leads (with her husband being played by Hugh Jackman.) Her character, Claire Sardina, is a Patsy Cline impersonator turned Diamond duo singer, and she gets to run the gamut of For Your Consideration plot points. It’s all very heavy handed, and if anything works about it, it’s Hudson’s effortless charm. She’s been buoying bad films with her charisma for decades, after all. But is it Best Actress good? Personally, I think Hudson pales in comparison to her competition, who, admittedly, have stronger material to work with, but are also hitting grander emotional peaks. If Hudson has something going for her that her competition lacks, it’s a movie that’s less stressful and tumultuous to watch than Hamnet, Bugonia, or If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. This is not a voter base with a penchant for being challenged.
Look, ‘organic Oscar buzz’ is kind of an oxymoron. The whole point of creating interest in a film for the purposes of awards attention is to fake it until you make it. Some movies naturally attract that discourse because certain tropes and figures fall in line with assumptions we have about what is ‘awards worthy.’ Others spark it by being just that good, but what follows is hard labour and not natural response. There’s a reason people get paid to spend all year generating this intrigue. So, I know on some level that saying there’s something phony-feeling about the Hudson and Song Sung Blue Oscar buzz is beside the point. Duh, they put a ton of work into getting those headlines.
And yet the way Hudson became an out-of-nowhere contender and presumed nominee in this season has felt especially gamified to me. It wasn’t rooted in a narrative of Hudson being ‘overdue’ or having been overlooked for decades of great work. This wasn’t a movie people were aching to see months ahead of its release, or one that has enraptured critics and audiences like many of its competitors. All of a sudden, right before Song Sung Blue’s release, every headline said it was an Oscar winner in waiting and that this was Hudson’s grand comeback (from what?)
In that lavish Variety profile, Hudson insists that Oscar buzz doesn’t ‘define my value’, which is a very funny faux-humble thing to say in this context. I always prefer it when the talent is open about their ambition rather than lying about it as they shake every hand and attend every party. Hudson has all the markers of classic Oscar thirst, so why not embrace it? Clearly, there’s a lot of industry love for her and we all love it when a frequently underestimated woman finally gets her dues. If she gets nominated, it’ll be thanks to a combination of hard work, industry goodwill, and charm. Then again, that’s usually what gets you the win, more so than the performance. If she gets the nom, maybe we’ll get a ‘Sweet Caroline’ singalong at the ceremony.
