In the pilot episode of Harvard Business School's new podcast 'The Founder Mindset', Witherspoon explains how her media company Hello Sunshine came to be
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NEED TO KNOW
- Reese Witherspoon hit a breaking point while filming three different TV shows at the same time in 2018
- She recounted the taxing moment in the pilot episode of The Founder Mindset, a new podcast from Harvard Business School, out May 6
- Witherspoon also recalled founding Hello Sunshine to address Hollywood’s lack of female-driven stories and create empowering content for women
As she built up her media company Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon reached a bit of a breaking point while filming three separate shows at once — filming back-to-back-to-back every day.
In the debut episode of Harvard Business School’s The Founder Mindset hosted by professor Reza Satchu, the actress-entrepreneur, 50, opened up about feeling the weight of her ultra-packed work schedule while working on the media company, which aims to promote women's stories.
While discussing Hello Sunshine in the pilot interview, Witherspoon recounted filming The Morning Show, Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere simultaneously.
“In 2018, I was making three television shows at once and I don’t know if people understand this, but each television show takes six months to make," she told host Satchu. "So they were stacked on top of each other."
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"So in the morning, I’d go be dressed as Bradley Jackson, change my clothes, run to another soundstage, be Madeline Martha Mackenzie in Big Little Lies and then go do a night shoot with Kerry Washington on Little Fires Everywhere," Witherspoon explained.
“I wanted to lay down sideways and melt into the earth. I just cried and cried and cried,” the actress told host Satchu as he acknowledged the mental toll the multi-project schedule must’ve taken. “And I had done it to myself,” she added.
“But it all worked out,” Witherspoon said. “And you can do really, really, really hard things.”
Around 2011, she said, “the scripts and parts for women were abysmal” and “really demeaning." At the time, an agent sent her the script for a film that saw two women fighting for the attention of a male lead. It was filled with “boob jokes” and “scatalogical humor,” she recalled.
Lots of top actresses were seeking a part in the project, Witherspoon said, adding that she remembers thinking to herself: “That’s what we’re fighting for?"
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Witherspoon said she was frustrated by the lack of female-driven stories in Hollywood, and would complain about the issue to her loved ones constantly before realizing she had been “admiring a problem” in Hollywood without doing anything to solve it.
Enter Hello Sunshine. The star first co-founded production company Pacific Standard, which helped to produce two massively popular book to movie adaptations, Wild and Gone Girl. The enterprise then became a subsidiary of Hello Sunshine, which kicked off by producing miniseries Big Little Lies, another massive adaptation.
Asked what was at stake if Hello Sunshine — and Witherspoon’s overall mission to increase Hollywood’s overall output of women-led stories — was unsuccessful, the actress told Satchu, “Can I be really honest? It was my daughter.” Witherspoon shares daughter Ava Phillippe, 26, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe.
“I saw a world where my daughter was watching television shows that really made women look terrible… overly sexualized or desperate for a man’s attention. Competition shows that really value how you look instead of the content of your character," she explained. "And I realized if I felt like that as a mom of a 13-year-old I’m sure lots of people feel this way.”
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Added Witherspoon: “So if I wasn’t creating aspirational content, who was going to do it? And, like, why not me? I had the support and I had the good will.”
Hear more of Witherspoon’s interview in the first episode of The Founder Mindset, part of Harvard Business School’s new Foundry initiative, which aims to bring the stories of business founders — and their insights — beyond the classroom
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