Key Points
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On a recent episode of Oliver and Kate Hudson’s Sibling Revelry podcast, the actors talked about memorizing their lines in projects.
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Oliver said he wasn’t good at it, and shared a story about forgetting his lines during a live taping of his sitcom Rules of Engagement.
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He recalls having to have the show’s script supervisor feed him the lines in order to finish the scene.
Oliver Hudson is looking back at one of his most embarrassing moments on set, and it involved a live audience, forgotten lines, and a very public meltdown.
During a recent episode of his and sister Kate Hudson‘s Sibling Revelry podcast, featuring guest Hannah Berner, the actor opened up about his struggles with memorizing dialogue while discussing the late Hayden Panettiere‘s impressive ability to learn her lines on their former series Nashville.
The conversation pivoted to the siblings’ own approaches to memorization, with Kate revealing that she could learn a monologue in as little as five minutes. She added, “The only time it’s really hard for me is, honestly, if it’s a different kind of cadence or a different kind of language.” Oliver hasn’t always been so fortunate.
“I’ve had some horrible moments on set. Oh, my God. One specifically was horrible: Rules of Engagement,” he cringed.
Hudson, who starred as Adam Rhodes on the CBS sitcom for seven seasons, described how things went spectacularly wrong during a scene performed in front of a live studio audience.
“I was doing this sitcom for, like, 9 million years. There’s a live audience, 300 people or whatever. I’m doing this scene and I forget my lines,” he said. “And okay, they laugh because they love when you f—up or whatever.”
But the initial laughter only made things worse. After forgetting his lines a second time, Hudson began getting increasingly nervous, eventually experiencing a complete mental blank.
“Now my mind goes blank because I start to get nervous. All that f—ing adrenaline starts going. Now I’m completely gone,” he explained. “Now they’re not laughing anymore. They’re just feeling for me.”
That’s when Hudson decided he’d had enough.
“Finally I say, ‘Okay, f— this,'” he recalled.
Rather than attempting to power through the scene, Hudson enlisted the help of the show’s script supervisor, who stood nearby and fed him his dialogue line by line.
“Tell me my line,” he remembered asking, explaining that he would have the supervisor give him each line before delivering it and moving to his next mark.
He even recalled the awkward process of getting through the scene, including one line — “Jen, why are you here?” — directed at his costar. (Bianca Kajlich played Adam’s fiancée and later his wife.)
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“I hit my mark. I’m like, ‘Jen, why are you here?’ And I’m like, all right, where do I go? This mark f—ing next,” he said.
Hudson continued relying on the script supervisor throughout the scene, repeatedly asking for his next line before delivering it. “I was like, ‘Tell me the line,’ say it, ‘tell me the line,’ say it.”
“That was horrible,” he admitted.
There was, however, one silver lining. After making it through the entire ordeal, Hudson said the audience ultimately responded with cheers and encouragement.
“But then the audience was like, ‘Yeah!'” he recalled.
You can listen to the episode of Sibling Revelrybelow:
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
