Kate Hudson, Mindy Kaling & Jeanie Buss on Netflix’s ‘Running Point’

SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses plot details from the Netflix series “Running Point,” which is now streaming.

Kate Hudson has always been a sports fan, and growing up between California and Colorado meant cheering for the Denver Broncos, the Los Angeles Kings and, of course, the L.A. Lakers. As a teenager, Hudson would go to Kings games with her parents, who introduced her to Jeanie Buss, the then 30-something executive who managed the Forum, where the hockey team played.

“Kate would just, like, shadow me,” Buss recalls. “I’d take her around the building give her a tour, explain what the Forum Club was, and how we operated the tickets and the box office.”

Hudson, sitting next to her, jumps in eagerly: “I was also a little naughty, so I would like to sneak into places. Jeanie kept me… she was like ‘You stay here.’”

As they start to crack up at the conjured memory of a 14-year-old Hudson trying to pull a fast one on her sisterly minder, a third voice pipes up. “What were these naughty places?” Mindy Kaling asks, wanting in on the fun too. Kaling wasn’t there for that part of the story, which has come full circle in the form of the new Netflix series “Running Point,” where Hudson portrays a fictionalized version of Buss, who is now the president and controlling owner of the Lakers.

Hudson never outright answers the question, but whether it was the locker room or getting behind the bar, Buss wasn’t about to have Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell thinking she was a bad influence. “I felt responsible!” Buss exclaims, making Hudson and Kaling laugh harder. “But I knew she would understand the craziness that goes on with running a team [for the show].”

Indeed, something Buss is willing to take responsibility for is “Running Point,” which developed from an idea she and Linda Rambis, her longtime friend and Lakers Executive Director of Special Projects, pitched to Kaling five years ago: a comedy about running a family business that’s also a storied professional sports team.

“Jeanie and Linda are fans of ‘The Office,’” Kaling explains. “That really surprised me, because I didn’t know Jeanie, but I soon came to realize that even though she’s the president of the Lakers and has an incredibly important and stressful job, she loves comedy, and she doesn’t take herself seriously. I love that about her.”

And the love goes both ways. “I’ve been surrounded by great talent like Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, and the idea of working with Mindy, is just like … I’m just so blessed,” Buss says, putting her palms together in praise, with her diamond-encrusted NBA championship ring catching the light. (In 2020, Buss became the first female controlling owner to lead a team to the league title.)

Kaling gasps, thrilled by Buss’ appraisal. “In the same sentence as Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant? Where am I in comparison to Luka [Dončić]? Like are we around the same level?” she jokes before letting the exec off the hook because it’s only been a couple games. “We’ll have to see. TBD.”

If you’re looking for insight into Buss’ methodology when it comes to blockbuster trades like last month’s Dončić deal, this series is not inaccurate. But it’s also not directly about the Lakers. As the project developed, Kaling and co-creators Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen, who first collaborated on “The Mindy Project,” pivoted away from a Lakers-focused vision and made up a team instead (the L.A. Waves).

Then Hudson got on board, signing on after she read the pilot — which sees Isla Gordon, the only daughter of the team’s owner, who is overlooked by her father and underestimated by her three brothers, unexpectedly become the president of the organization. There, she’s tasked with getting a flailing team back on track toward the playoffs, while navigating the big egos and petulant personalities of players and the larger sports community’s questions about whether she’s the right woman for the job, plus learning that she’s got another sibling whose identity was a secret — until now.

“That was the trajectory of this: it started with a really strong, amazing blonde woman, and then it ended with another strong, amazing blonde woman,” Kaling says, gesturing to Hudson beside her.

It wasn’t totally a given that Hudson would say yes. After all, she’s a movie star — Oscar nominated for her breakout role in “Almost Famous” and the lead of rom-com classics like “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” — who has rarely done TV.

“I’ve always wanted to do a comedic series, but I’ve been very trepidatious. It’s really hard to get comedy right,” Hudson says, comparing a well-timed script to great choreography. The key to nailing it, she explains, is by zeroing in on the character’s purpose and grounding the funny in that reality. With Isla, it was about her family legacy, which Hudson could relate to.

“Your parents have worked so hard to create a legacy. How do you protect that? How do you carry it? How do you nurture it?” she says. “Jeanie’s story is very different than mine — because the arts is very different than an actual franchise — but I understand what it’s like to always want to show up, to make sure that you’re protecting what that is.”

Read on as Buss, Hudson and Kaling on discuss crafting a comedy that blends family dynamics with sports, Hudson’s Keanu Reeves impression and why this show could be their “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The initial premise was focused on the Lakers. What did turning the focus onto a fictional team – the Waves – allow you to do?

MINDY KALING: Creatively, that was everything. My co-creator, David Stassen, was adamant about that and it made so much sense. This is a fictionalized version of Jeanie’s life. She has real-life relationships with people, and we want to protect that by not basing anything on anyone. Of course, there’s flourishes that are [real]. She, famously, was in relationships with people that we’re like, “Oh, that’s really interesting,” and we cherry pick those things. But we want to protect her relationships.

We also don’t want people to think if this is the Lakers, then every time there’s some big news — like this big trade — they’re like, “Well, what is the show gonna say about it?” That became a logistical issue that we thought would drain from our creativity. This way, we can do things like Justin Theroux bashed his car into a place on the PCH because he has a drug problem, and no one is upset with us. We can make the show so much more outrageous by fictionalizing it.

Jeanie, what was this collaboration like? You have the real-world experience — what do people tend to get wrong, or right, about the way that the front office operates?

JEANIE BUSS: You have to have a sense of humor and the humility to laugh at yourself, because sometimes you’re put in impossible, awkward situations. And comedy is such a tool that you can use to diffuse tense situations so that you can move the ball forward, so I just think it really fits. It is an important message that people in a workplace need: to chill out and take a look at how ridiculous some things are, like fighting over a parking space, and who gets what title, and who sits in what chair on the bench.

[This show] is really about a family. The majority of businesses in this country are family-owned businesses, so it’s a relatable story. Even though it’s so glamorous and it’s sports and it’s this successful team, it’s really comes down to the family and how we all operate with each other.

Kate, what sensibilities did you want to bring to Isla as you developed the character? There’s so much physical comedy woven in as well.

KATE HUDSON: Everybody has their comedic purpose, and when you hit that stride, then it’s like great choreography. There’s a straight man and there’s the broad character, and when everybody understands the assignment, we’re rolling.

KALING: And Kate can do both. She can walk into a room and tell the team off, and then she can fall backwards in a chair because Chet Hanks tries to kiss her. You can give the riveting speech, and then you know how to walk into a glass door.

HUDSON: It’s finding the balance and making sure that that feels real enough to be funny. All those little nuances are important. But you can’t do it without all the supporting, amazing talent on the show and the writing.

Since you mentioned the riveting speech – what was the inspiration behind Isla hyping up the team by comparing them to “John Wick”?

KALING: Kate’s Keanu Reeves impression is one of my favorite moments, and so unexpected! As writer, it’s so great, because — as someone who used to act — being able to be like, “Hey, let’s just see if she can do a John Wick impression,” and we’re like, “Kate, here’s the pages.”

HUDSON: Doing that was very intimidating. I tried my best.

KALING: It was so funny. She’s such a nimble performer. She went from a scene that I find to be very moving, and then to a Keanu Reeves impression less than five minutes later.

Those are my favorite kinds of shows. Obviously, there are some comedies where you are just there to laugh, but what I love and I wanted to create, was something that really had a heart, but then had really hard jokes — which you can only do when you have a performer like Kate.

Kate, what made you trepidatious about previous series? And what makes you, now, so excited about the prospect of more? How far down the road are you talking?

HUDSON: I understand how long these series take. I have three kids [Ryder, 21, Bingham, 12, and Rani, 6] — well, one’s cooked — but it’s a lot of work, and it’s really, really long hours. It’s much longer, even, than a film, so you have to love it. [With this series], there’s so much love. The dream is that you just love the people you’re working with, you love the character you’re playing, you love the world that you’re in.

And we get to shoot in Los Angeles, so I get to be home in our beautiful town, that’s been through so much, that we get to celebrate right now.

KALING: I hope that she’ll treat this like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” where she’ll want to do this over and over again. Some years she wants to take a couple years off, then “I want to do that again.”

I’ve made a lot of shows. This one was just so filled with joy. I mean, it helped that Kate was the one doing the 16-hour days, not me. I wasn’t there for the 5 a.m. call time for 27 weeks straight.

HUDSON: I get better at hour 14. That’s when I start to get weird.

KALING: That first season one is always sort of like this. And what’s great, thinking about other seasons, is the cast is stacked. We have really great characters we invested in this season, so we’re hoping they can pick up some slack next season and do some more stories.

HUDSON: It’s also really fun to threaten people with this show with trades. We never know when next season brings, trades are always there, so if you misbehave …

It is a performance-based sport. Jeanie, what was it like to see your memories inform this story?

BUSS: I’m just humbled by the ability that you [to Mindy] have to pick up what’s really happening. In the moment, I’m just trying to survive and think of my next move. You tell such great stories and know how to articulate it.

KALING: The material is just so good, so juicy. We could do the show until Kate is … like I said, Larry David did his for 25 years. [Jeanie’s] book is incredible; there’s just so much rich material.

This interview has been edited and condensed.