How Reese Witherspoon Turned Star Power Into an Empire

0:00Get the news you need in just 15 minutes. Start your day with Bloomberg Daybreak, the podcast with a global view on the stories that matter. I'm Nathan Hager. And I'm Karen Moscow. Join us each morning for curated stories on current events, politics, business and foreign relations. Plus one conversation on the day's biggest developments all in just 15 minutes. Subscribe to Bloomberg Daybreak for a precise, thoughtful take on the stories that matter. Listen to Bloomberg Daybreak each morning on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen. I'm Emily Chang, and this is The Circuit. This week on The Pod, a conversation about power, purpose, and the business of storytelling with Reese Witherspoon.

0:41What does it take to be the main character in your own story? I think we all know if you're over a certain age, you realize no one's coming to save you. You are the hero of your story. No one's coming to save the day. Witherspoon has built a career playing women who refuse to be underestimated, from Legally Blonde's Elle Woods to Cheryl Strayed from Into the Wild. But behind the scenes, she was watching who held the power and who didn't. And I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy and she goes, what do we do now?

1:17Now do you know any woman in any crisis who has absolutely no idea what to do? In 2016, she founded Hello Sunshine to tell women's stories not as side plots, but as the center of the narrative. In 2021, the company sold to Candle Media for a headline-grabbing$900 million. But just a few years later, Hollywood finds itself in upheaval, with streaming slowdowns, shrinking budgets, and an industry still figuring out what comes next. I met up with Witherspoon in Los Angeles at her live summit Shine Away, where hundreds of women gathered to share ideas with A-list stars, authors, and innovators in a celebration of ambition, community, and the power of women's stories.

2:01Here's my conversation with actress, producer, and founder Reese Witherspoon. Vibe check. How are you feeling? It's kind of overwhelming because it's like the physical manifestation of a dream that I've had for a long time. Yeah. But now here we are and all these people are here. What are the big themes that you want the audience to take home? I think a big part of why I'm excited about today is community. I think we all crave it as human beings. We don't connect as much, particularly in this modern world where we're flying a lot and we're all very occupied with things that are going on online and our daily problems.

2:40And I think the idea of connecting over like-minded ideas and sharing and connecting is just something people need to experience. And there's something about it coming to life today that's been really emotional for me. Because I imagine this. I did a whole exercise when I started this company where I wrote down what I wanted it to look like. And a big part of it was having this moment of people actually seeing each other in one space. I mean, you got emotional up there. I know. Women came from 30 different states, from other countries to meet their favorite authors, to be inspired by entrepreneurs and women in health care.

3:15And it's really emotional to me. And it's not lost on me. I feel really lucky to be a woman in this position, to gather other women and help enhance their lives, even if it's only just for a day or even if you have one little life motto takeaway. It's that kind of community that can really change people's lives. What does it take to be the main character in your own story? I think we all know if you're over a certain age, you realize no one's coming to save you. You are the hero of your story, whether that means you save yourself in a financial situation, you've saved yourself from a relationship that didn't work.

3:51No one's coming to save the day. Over time, how has your appetite for risk and your level of ambition changed? The thing about risk is when you do it and you kind of get away with stuff and it works out, you keep taking more risks. And then you start to, I get excited about the challenge of trying something new. Looking back on your career, you seemed to pick the perfect roles at the perfect time. How would you describe your instincts? Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. I think back a lot about the opportunities that came my way in my early 20s. Because a lot of the movies that I made in my early 20s and my late 20s are sort of the movies that made me who I was.

4:31Imprinted on people's minds who I am as an actress. I was always really clear about what I wanted to express. Even I remember doing Legally Blonde and thinking, this isn't a story about a ditzy girl who goes to Harvard. It's actually about a woman who's very substantive but is unapologetically feminine. And the two can exist at the same time. You didn't have to be strident and look a certain way to be considered academic or serious. I mean, I also had fun with feminism. It did look like you were having fun. I had so much fun. We had fun. I know. That role changed my life in so many ways. Also, because it became a musical, so many young girls have played that part.

5:12So it's kind of the only role, Elle Woods, is the only role that I've had that I share with so many different people. My son's middle school is putting it on in a couple weeks, and we've got tickets. Yeah. All of us. And it's fun, and it's part of conversation still 20 years later. That's why we're really excited to be doing the Elle Woods. We're doing a television show with Amazon where we're going to do the prequel where she's in high school. I know, and you've got an open casting call. We're having open casting, so I thought it'd be fun to open it up and let people feel like they might be the next Elwoods.

5:42I hope you're going to teach her the bend and snap because it needs to be perfect. I mean, of course. You set out to create a company that would change the conversation for women. Does it feel like you're going forward? I think it feels like we are taking the right strides forward. But even if you look at the statistics, it's not 50-50. I mean, there's still a deficit of female directors, a deficit in screenwriting, but it's making meaningful change. I mean, the numbers, the percentages are jumping. And I think the consciousness around it has totally changed. It's like the lights are on. You can't pretend that you don't know that we aren't hiring women and people of color for these jobs.

6:18So there's definitely more of an acceptance that stories aren't just need to be told by the same 20 filmmakers over and over again. How much progress do you feel you've made so far? I think there's been a lot of progress since I started. I really started the first iteration of this company was around 2011. It was just a wildly different time. There wasn't streaming. There wasn't social media. The idea of using all these new technologies and this ability to gather women in a positive way through storytelling and empowering different filmmakers and different authors to share these stories that have been sitting in their mind.

6:58It's just incredible. And to see what we've accomplished in just a relatively short amount of time. We really got ramped up around 2016. And your book club now has a massive influence over the publishing industry. By some estimates, it's bigger than Oprah's. How do you view that power? I have a sort of a tricky relationship with the word power, you know? It doesn't feel like power to me. To me, there's definitely a feeling of maybe influencing people towards literacy. our main metric at Hello Sunshine is like, is it shareable? Because I want to build community around reading. I don't want you to read it and feel siloed and you don't want to have a conversation.

7:38I love that idea and that energy of people sharing things and talking about them and creating conversation. And my original idea was what I really dreamed about was taking the book club out of your living room and into the global community online. In some ways, this today is like taking it back down to its essential elements. And having so many authors here is such a thrill for me because those are my rock stars. Authors are my rock stars. The Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit returns to Singapore on July 22nd. Our fifth annual Asia Pacific Summit will explore how business and finance leaders are shaping the next phase of globalization by strengthening resilience and driving a multi-speed energy transition across Asia's diverse markets.

8:24Join us for solutions-driven discussions and networking opportunities. Thank you to our summit advisor, Bangkok Bank. Learn more at bloomberglive.com slash SBS dash Singapore. You've got books, you've got podcasts, movies, TV, obviously live events. What era is Hello Sunshine in now? Well, we're definitely beyond the beginning. thing. One of my favorite things about being part of a company like this is it's ever evolving. So it feels like it's always growing. And then we're also, we're young enough and new enough that we can pivot. So that's really important to me because you have to watch. It's not about telling people, come to us.

9:09We have to be able to go to them. And if that means podcasts, great. If that means television shows are more popular than movies at a certain time, we can sort of drive the ship towards that. So I feel lucky that we're nimble. I asked folks what they wanted to hear most from you. And, you know, starting a business is hard. It is hard. What was the hardest lesson you had to learn and how did you push through it? I think the hardest lesson for me was even if you have great creative ideas, it doesn't mean you have the business plan to back it up. So I've learned a lot of hard lessons in business.

9:43If certain verticals don't work, you have to really look at them critically. Even though you think it's a good idea, it doesn't mean it is. And it doesn't mean that you should stop taking risks, but you need to understand that you can't continue to risk if things aren't providing economic value. So it's this constant battle in my mind between the art of things and the commerce of things. I came from the middle of America, and I loved big, poppy, popular films. And I love television shows. I watched hours of it after school. So I've always gone to that place of, how does this speak to people? How does this make people feel?

10:20And I do think there's always a world where you can do well and do good at the same time. Your company sold for almost a billion dollars. How do you live up to the expectations? The public's expectations, investors' expectations? Yeah. I mean, one of the main things that kept occurring to me when I was in the process of selling the company was not necessarily how it made me feel validated, but I thought it was really important that a company that was about female storytelling mattered. The value of it mattered because it's such a reflection in this world about do we care and invest in women's stories?

10:57And I am so proud of everything we've created. My team is impeccable. They work so hard, but they also wake up working on this mission that they truly believe. And that's like all I could have ever hoped for. It's just to create a company that makes me proud and makes me think the women who came before me would be very proud. There's a sense that Hollywood still hasn't recovered from the downturn. Has the content bubble popped? And how is that changing the strategy? I think definitely there's a shift. It's in any market. You know, we're seeing things are contracting for sure. But I think it's going to get back to a business that's really based on great storytelling.

11:37And we continue to look for the best books to turn into movies and television shows. We have a dynamic where because of the book club, we get access to these incredible authors who give us these great manuscripts. So we're getting early access. And I'm determined to just keep elevating stories for women. I'm not here to tell, you know, a million stories. I want tell really great stories that really resonate with people. And my biggest compliment is when people come up to me on the street and say, that story reminded me of something that's going on in my life or my sister's life or my cousin's life, because that's what I wasn't seeing when I started the company.

12:14Compare the streaming era of Hollywood to the studio era. Like, what's it like working with Apple and Amazon and Netflix versus traditional studios? Well, there's obviously, there's different dynamics because we have data. We have empirical data. That like button is pretty powerful. The like button is powerful. The data transparency is very powerful. So we're getting that from some of our studio partners and others not. But I do see things shifting towards sharing more data so that we can create more targeted content to the people who really want to see it. And also rewarding people who are doing great at what they do.

12:52Every business has to have a way to reward products or material that continues to rise. So as I see this evolution, I see it as, I mean, it's kind of a great opportunity to refine our ideas. And there was so much going on before that was just being bought and made and bought and made. And it was about time that we needed to sort of get to the real premium content again. The world is so different today than when you were playing Elle Woods. It's dominated by algorithms and AI and social media. How do you imagine your career might be different if you were just starting out now? Oh, my gosh, Emily.

13:36I don't think my career would be possible. It's a different world. I see young people and I have so much compassion for young performers and actors because they have to be the producer. or the director, they have to shoot their own videos. They have to market themselves. That's not something that I understood when I was 20 years old. It was something that was an entire apparatus to market materials. So it's a different challenging time. That said, the incredibly talented people will always rise, right? Even in a glut of information, real talent survives and thrives. What do you think is next? I think we're seeing women getting the economic empowerment.

14:18And also now we have this empirical data that women's stories matter. Female artistry matters. The market is responding, right? Because women consume media. They're on these platforms really liking and proselytizing on social media about the things they love. They're marketing these products. And I think it's really nice to see the acknowledgement by different industries that acknowledging women as consumers is actually good business. You found a way to embrace femininity, but also power and agency. How do you imagine that journey being different for girls today? Do you have any advice for our daughters?

14:59I think we have to trust our daughters. They are listening. I think we have to lead by example and do the very best we can to walk the walk. I know I try really hard with my company to show a whole dynamic spectrum of the female experience. Because if we normalize that there are all kinds of different women making different life choices, whether you want kids, you don't want kids, you want to be a career woman, you don't want to be a career woman. You struggle to make it. Wait, you worry, you question about your origins, right? When we see more stories, we become more compassionate about each other as humans.

15:36I have three sons and a daughter. And so it's just crazy seeing how life is different for them. How old's your daughter? She's five. I think it'll shift. I really do. I think it'll shift back to, I see young people too kind of reverting back to this idea of stripping off all that artifice. I think it's kind of punk rock. It's punk rock. Not authenticity, it's punk rock. My daughter and I talk about it. I'm like, I think it's kind of punk rock to not put a bunch of filters on yourself. I love it. I love it. Hashtag no filter. And that's Reese Witherspoon, actress, producer, and founder of Hello Sunshine, reminding us that empowerment isn't just a storyline, it's a strategy.

16:17You can watch this full episode of The Circuit on Bloomberg Originals and the Bloomberg YouTube channel. You'll hear from both Reese and members of Hello Sunshine's C-suite team, newly appointed CEO Maureen Polo and president of film and television Lauren Neustadter. You can follow me on X and Instagram at emilychangtv and let us know what you think by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our senior producer is Lauren Ellis. Our producer is Abigail Harper. Our editor is Gramercy Post. I'm Emily Chang, your host and executive producer. Thanks for listening.

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