Speaker 1: I'm Emily Chang, and this is the circuit. This week
Speaker 1: on the Pod, a conversation about power, purpose, and the
Speaker 1: business of storytelling with Reese Witherspoon. What does it take
Speaker 1: to be the main character in your own story? I
Speaker 1: think we all know if you're over a certain age,
Speaker 1: you realize no one's coming to save you.
Speaker 2: You are the hero of your story. No one's coming
Speaker 2: to save the day.
Speaker 1: Witherspoon has built a career playing women who refuse to
Speaker 1: be underestimated, from Legally Blonde el Woods to Cheryl Strade
Speaker 1: from Into the Wild. But behind the scenes, she was
Speaker 1: watching who held the power and who didn't.
Speaker 3: And I dread reading scripts that have no women involved
Speaker 3: in their creation because in eviily, I get.
Speaker 2: To that part with the girl turns to the guy
Speaker 2: and she goes, what do we do now?
Speaker 3: Now? Do you know any woman in any crisis who
Speaker 3: has absolutely.
Speaker 2: No idea what to do?
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, she founded Hello Sunshine to tell women
Speaker 1: stories not as side plots, but as the center of
Speaker 1: the narrative. In twenty twenty one, the company sold to
Speaker 1: Candle Media for a headline grabbing nine hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: but just a few years later, Hollywood finds itself in upheaval,
Speaker 1: with streaming slowdowns, shrinking budgets, and an industry still figuring
Speaker 1: out what comes next. I met up with Witherspoon in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles at her live summit shine Away, where hundreds
Speaker 1: of women gathered to share ideas with a list stars, authors,
Speaker 1: and innovators in a celebration of ambition, community, and the
Speaker 1: power of women's stories. Here's my conversation with actress, producer,
Speaker 1: and founder Reese Witherspoon.
Speaker 4: Vibe check. How are you feeling.
Speaker 3: It's kind of overwhelming because it's the It's like the
Speaker 3: physical manifestation of a dream that I've had for a
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but now here we are and all these people
Speaker 2: are here.
Speaker 4: What are the big seams that you want the audience
Speaker 4: to take home.
Speaker 3: I think a big part of why I'm excited about
Speaker 3: today is community. I think we all crave it as
Speaker 3: human beings. We don't connect as much, particularly in this
Speaker 3: modern world where we're flying a lot, and we're all
Speaker 3: very occupied with things that are going on online and
Speaker 3: our daily problems, and I think the idea of connecting
Speaker 3: over like minded ideas and sharing and connecting is just
Speaker 3: something people need to experience, and there's something about it
Speaker 3: coming to life today that's been really emotional for me because.
Speaker 2: I imagine this.
Speaker 3: I did a whole exercise when I started this company
Speaker 3: where I wrote down what I wanted it to look like,
Speaker 3: and a big part of it was having this moment
Speaker 3: of people actually seeing each other in one space.
Speaker 4: I mean, you got emotional up there, you know what.
Speaker 3: Women came from thirty different states, from other countries to
Speaker 3: meet their favorite authors, to be inspired by entrepreneurs and
Speaker 3: women in healthcare.
Speaker 2: And it's really emotional to me, and it's not lost
Speaker 2: on me.
Speaker 3: I'm so I feel really lucky to be a woman
Speaker 3: in this position to gather other women and help enhance
Speaker 3: their lives, even if it's only just for a day,
Speaker 3: or even if you have one little life mob take away.
Speaker 3: It's that kind of community that can really change people's lives.
Speaker 1: What does it take to be the main character in
Speaker 1: your own story?
Speaker 3: I think we all know if you're over a certain age,
Speaker 3: you realize no one's coming to save you.
Speaker 2: You are the hero of your story.
Speaker 3: Whether that means you save yourself in a financial situation,
Speaker 3: you've saved yourself from a relationship, that didn't work.
Speaker 2: No one's coming to save the day.
Speaker 1: Over time, How has your appetite for risk and your
Speaker 1: level of ambition changed.
Speaker 3: The thing about risk is when you do it and
Speaker 3: you kind of get away with stuff and it works out,
Speaker 3: you keep taking more risks, and then you started I
Speaker 3: get excited about the challenge of trying something new.
Speaker 1: Looking back on your career, you seem to pick the
Speaker 1: perfect roles at the perfect time.
Speaker 4: How would you describe your instincts?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3: I think back a lot about the opportunities that came
Speaker 3: my way in my early twenties, because a lot of
Speaker 3: the movies that I made in my early twenties and
Speaker 3: my late twenties are sort of the movies that made
Speaker 3: me who I was, imprinted on people's mind to who
Speaker 3: I am as an actress. I was always really clear
Speaker 3: about what I wanted to express. Even I remember doing
Speaker 3: Legally Blonde and thinking, this isn't a story about a
Speaker 3: ditsy girl who goes to Harvard. It's actually about a
Speaker 3: woman who's very substantive but is unapologetically feminine, and the
Speaker 3: two can exist at the same time. You didn't have
Speaker 3: to be strident, to look a certain way, to be
Speaker 3: considered academic or serious.
Speaker 2: I mean also had fun with feminism.
Speaker 4: It did look like you were having fun.
Speaker 2: I had so much fun.
Speaker 4: We had fun.
Speaker 3: I know that role changed my life in so many ways. Also,
Speaker 3: because it became a musical, so many young girls have
Speaker 3: played that part. So it's kind of the only role.
Speaker 3: El Woods is the only role that I've had that
Speaker 3: I share with so many different people.
Speaker 1: My son's middle school is putting it on in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and we've got tickets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3: Fun and it's part of conversation still twenty years later.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm really excited to be doing the Elwoods.
Speaker 3: We're doing a television show with Amazon where we're going
Speaker 3: to do the prequel where she's in high school. I
Speaker 3: know you've got an open casting call, having open casting,
Speaker 3: so I thought it'd be fun to open it up
Speaker 3: and let people feel like they might be the next Doll. Ways.
Speaker 1: I hope you're going to teach her the bend and
Speaker 1: snap because it needs to be perfect. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: you set out to create a company that would change
Speaker 1: the conversation for women. Does it feel like you're going forward.
Speaker 3: I think it feels like we are taking the right
Speaker 3: strides forward. But even if you look at the statistics,
Speaker 3: it's not fifty to fifty. I mean, there's still a
Speaker 3: deficit of female directors, a deficit in screenwriting, but it's
Speaker 3: making meaningful change. I mean the numbers, the percentages are jumping,
Speaker 3: and I think the consciousness around it has totally changed.
Speaker 3: It's like the lights are on. You can't pretend that
Speaker 3: you don't know that we aren't hiring women and people
Speaker 3: of color for these jobs. So there's definitely more of
Speaker 3: an acceptance that stories aren't just need to be told,
Speaker 3: but the same twenty filmmakers over and over again.
Speaker 4: How much progress do you feel you've made so far.
Speaker 3: I think there's been a lot of progress since I started.
Speaker 2: I really started.
Speaker 3: The first iteration of this company was around twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: It was just a wildly different time. There wasn't streaming,
Speaker 3: there wasn't social media. The idea of using all these
Speaker 3: new technologies and these ability to gather women in a
Speaker 3: positive way through storytelling and empowering different filmmakers and different
Speaker 3: authors to share these stories that have been sitting in
Speaker 3: their mind, it's just incredible and to see what we've
Speaker 3: accomplished in just a relatively short amount of time.
Speaker 2: We really got ramped up around twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: And your book club now has a massive influence over
Speaker 1: the publishing industry. By some estimates, it's bigger than Oprah's.
Speaker 4: How do you view that power?
Speaker 3: I have a sort of a tricky relationship with the
Speaker 3: word power.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't feel like power to me.
Speaker 3: To me, it's there's definitely a feeling of maybe influencing
Speaker 3: people towards literacy. Our main metric at Hell Sunshine is like,
Speaker 3: is it shareable? Because I want to build community around reading.
Speaker 3: I don't want you to read it and feel siloed
Speaker 3: and you don't want to have a conversation. I love
Speaker 3: that idea and that energy of people sharing things and
Speaker 3: talking about them and creating conversation. And my original idea
Speaker 3: was what I really dreamed about, was taking the book
Speaker 3: club out of your living room and into the global
Speaker 3: community online. In some ways, this today is like taking
Speaker 3: it back down to its essential elements. And having so
Speaker 3: many authors here is such a thrill for me because
Speaker 3: those are my rock stars.
Speaker 2: Authors are my rock stars.
Speaker 1: You've got books, you've got podcasts, movies, TV, obviously live events.
Speaker 4: What era is hello Sunshine in now?
Speaker 3: Well, we're definitely beyond the beginning. One of my favorite
Speaker 3: things about being part of a company like this is
Speaker 3: it's ever evolving, so it feels like it's always growing.
Speaker 3: And then we're also we're you're young enough and new
Speaker 3: enough that we can pivot. So that's really important to
Speaker 3: me because you have to watch. It's not about telling
Speaker 3: people come to us. We have to be able to
Speaker 3: go to them. And if that means podcast, great, If
Speaker 3: that means television shows are more popular in the movies
Speaker 3: at a certain time, we can sort of drive the
Speaker 3: ship towards that.
Speaker 2: So I feel lucky that we're nimble.
Speaker 1: I asked folks what they wanted to hear most from you,
Speaker 1: and you know, starting a business is hard.
Speaker 2: It is hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was the hardest lesson you had to learn
Speaker 1: and how did you push through it?
Speaker 3: I think the hardest lesson for me was even if
Speaker 3: you have great creative ideas, it doesn't mean you have
Speaker 3: the business plan to back it up. So I've learned
Speaker 3: a lot of hard lessons in business. If certain verticals
Speaker 3: don't work, you have to really look at them critically.
Speaker 3: Even though you think it's a good idea, it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it is and it doesn't mean that you should
Speaker 3: stop taking risks. But you need to understand that you
Speaker 3: can't continue to risk if things aren't providing economic value.
Speaker 3: So it's this constant battle in my mind between the
Speaker 3: art of things and the commerce of things. I came
Speaker 3: from the middle of America, and I loved big, poppy,
Speaker 3: popular films, and I love television shows.
Speaker 2: I watched hours of it after school.
Speaker 3: So I've always gone to that place of how does
Speaker 3: this speak to people? How does this make people feel?
Speaker 2: And I do think there's always a world where you
Speaker 2: can do well and do good at the same time.
Speaker 1: Your company sold for almost a billion dollars, How do
Speaker 1: you live up to the expectations, the public's expectations, investors expectations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one of the main things that kept
Speaker 3: occurring to me when I was in the process of
Speaker 3: selling the company was not necessarily how it made me
Speaker 3: feel validated, but I thought it was really important that
Speaker 3: a company that was about female storytelling mattered. The value
Speaker 3: of it mattered, because it's such a reflection in this
Speaker 3: world about do we care and invest in women's stories?
Speaker 3: And I'm so proud of everything we've created. My team
Speaker 3: is impeccable. They work so hard, but they also wake
Speaker 3: up working on this mission that they truly believe. And
Speaker 3: that's like all I could have ever hoped for is
Speaker 3: just to create a company that makes me proud and
Speaker 3: makes me think the women who came before me would
Speaker 3: be very proud.
Speaker 1: There's a sense that Hollywood still hasn't recovered from the downturn.
Speaker 1: Has the content bubble popped and how is that changing
Speaker 1: the strategy?
Speaker 3: I think definitely there's a shifts in any market. You know,
Speaker 3: we're seeing things are contracting, for sure, but I think
Speaker 3: it's going to get back to a business that's really
Speaker 3: based on great storytelling, and we continue to look for
Speaker 3: the best books to turn into movies and television shows.
Speaker 3: We have a dynamic where because of the book Club,
Speaker 3: we get access to these incredible authors who give us
Speaker 3: these great manuscripts. So we're getting early access and I'm
Speaker 3: determined to just keep elevating stories for women. I'm not
Speaker 3: here to tell, you know, a million stories. I want
Speaker 3: to tell really great stories that really resonate with people.
Speaker 3: And my biggest compliment is when people come up to
Speaker 3: me on the street and say that story reminded me
Speaker 3: of something that's going on in my life, or my
Speaker 3: sister's life, or my cousin's life, because that's what I
Speaker 3: wasn't seeing when I started the company.
Speaker 1: Compare the streaming era of Hollywood to the studio era,
Speaker 1: Like what's it like working with Apple and Amazon and
Speaker 1: Netflix versus traditional studios.
Speaker 3: Well, there's obviously there's different dynamics because we have data.
Speaker 3: We have empirical data that like button is pretty powerful,
Speaker 3: Like button is powerful, the data transparency is very powerful.
Speaker 3: So we're getting that from some of our studio partners
Speaker 3: and others not. But I do see things shifting towards
Speaker 3: sharing more data so that we can create more targeted
Speaker 3: content to the people who really want to see it,
Speaker 3: and also rewarding people who are doing great at what
Speaker 3: they do. Every business has to have a way to
Speaker 3: reward products or materialial that continues to rise. So as
Speaker 3: I see this evolution, I see it as I mean,
Speaker 3: it's kind of a great opportunity to refine our ideas.
Speaker 3: And there was so much going on for that was
Speaker 3: just being bought and made and bought and made, and
Speaker 3: it was it was about time that we needed to
Speaker 3: sort of get to the real premium content.
Speaker 1: Again, the world is so different today than when you
Speaker 1: were playing el Woods. It's dominated by algorithms and AI
Speaker 1: and social media. How do you imagine your career might
Speaker 1: be different if you were just starting out now?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Emily, I don't think my career would
Speaker 3: be possible.
Speaker 2: It's a different world.
Speaker 3: I see young people, and I have so much compassion
Speaker 3: for young performers and actors because they have to be
Speaker 3: the producer, the director, They have to shoot their own videos,
Speaker 3: they have to market themselves. That's not something that I
Speaker 3: understood when I was twenty years old. It was something
Speaker 3: there was an entire apparatus to market material. So it's
Speaker 3: a different challenge time. That said, the incredibly talented people
Speaker 3: will always rise, right, even in a glut of information,
Speaker 3: real talent survives and thrives.
Speaker 4: What do you think is next?
Speaker 3: I think we're seeing women getting the economic empowerment and
Speaker 3: also now we have this empirical data that women's stories matter,
Speaker 3: female artistry matters. The market is responding right because women
Speaker 3: consume media. They are on these platforms really liking and
Speaker 3: proselytizing on social media about the things they love. They're
Speaker 3: marketing these products, and I think it's really nice to
Speaker 3: see the acknowledgment by different industries that acknowledging women as
Speaker 3: consumers is actually good business.
Speaker 1: You found a way to embrace femininity but also power
Speaker 1: and agency. How do you imagine that journey being different
Speaker 1: for girls today? Do you have any advice for our daughters.
Speaker 2: I think we have to trust our daughters.
Speaker 3: They are listening. I think we have to lead by
Speaker 3: example and do the very best we can to.
Speaker 2: Walk the walk. I know.
Speaker 3: I try really hard with my company to show a whole,
Speaker 3: dynamic spectrum of the female experience, because if we normalize that,
Speaker 3: there are all kinds of different women making different life choices.
Speaker 3: Whether you want kids, you don't want kids, you want
Speaker 3: to be a career woman, you don't want to be
Speaker 3: a career woman, you struggle to make it, wait, you worry,
Speaker 3: you question about your origins. Right when we see more stories,
Speaker 3: we become more compassionate about each other as humans.
Speaker 1: I have three sons and a daughter, so it's just
Speaker 1: crazy seeing how life is different from.
Speaker 2: What's your daughter.
Speaker 4: She's five.
Speaker 2: I think it'll shift, I really do.
Speaker 3: I think it'll shift back to I see young people
Speaker 3: too kind of reverting back to this idea of stripping
Speaker 3: off all that artifice.
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of punk rock.
Speaker 4: It's punk rock and not authenticity.
Speaker 2: It's punk I talk about it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I think it's kind of punk rock to
Speaker 3: not put a bunch of filters on yourself.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it hashtag no filter.
Speaker 1: And that's Reese Witherspoon, actress, producer, and founder of Hello
Speaker 1: Sunshine reminding us that empowerment isn't just a storyline, it's
Speaker 1: a strategy. You can watch this full episode of the
Speaker 1: circuit on Bloomberg Originals and the Bloomberg YouTube channel. You'll
Speaker 1: hear from both Reese and members of Hello Sunshine c
Speaker 1: suite team, newly appointed CEO Maureen Polo and President of
Speaker 1: Film and Television Lauren Newstatter. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: ex and Instagram at Emily Chang TV and let us
Speaker 1: know what you think by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Our senior producer is
Speaker 1: Lauren Ellis, Our producer is Abigail Harper. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Grammarcy Post. I'm Emily Chang, your host and executive producer.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,