Many presidential candidates get cozy with Hollywood. But Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is in a category all by herself where entertainment industry relationships are concerned.
From her friendships with power players like Disney’s Dana Walden and CAA’s Bryan Lourd, to her connections to a network of Black creatives like Beyoncé, Octavia Spencer and producer Reggie Hudlin and his wife Chrisette, to common cause with advocates for LGBTQ rights and climate protection, Harris is practically without peer in being able to mobilize an army of cultural influence to propel forward her historic bid for the presidency.
That army has wasted no time moving into gear.
Beyoncé gave Harris the rights to use her song “Freedom” for rally walk-ins this week. George Clooney endorsed Harris on Tuesday, and she received $7 million in donations from Netflix co-fouder Reed Hastings.
But that’s the least of it. The abrupt rise of her candidacy sent a jolt through Hollywood, driving a new flood of donations and drawing together an energized power base that has known Harris for more than a decade, since she ran for California attorney general in 2010.
“As California Attorney General, she was very much a rising star so that helped her tap into Hollywood,” Dan Morain, author of the 2021 Harris biography “Kamala’s Way,” said in an interview with TheWrap.
“Every Democrat in Hollywood’s going to be with her now,” he continued, noting that she and husband Doug Emhoff live in Los Angeles’ tony Brentwood neighborhood, “so she would have more contacts in LA now than she did as a San Francisco-based attorney.”
The Hollywood list of Harris donors since then is a Who’s Who of politically engaged power players: JJ Abrams, David Geffen, Casey Wasserman, Aaron Sorkin and Jamie Foxx. Many of them gave to her successful 2016 Senate campaign, and practically every major studio donated to her disastrous presidential primary campaign in 2019.
Influential figures in Black and Brown Hollywood who are already vocal in their support of Harris include not just the Hudlins and Spencer, but Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Spike Lee, among many others.
Christy Haubegger, the firecracker former head of inclusion and communications at WarnerMedia and previously a top inclusion executive at CAA, is consulting to the Harris campaign, TheWrap has learned.
To some degree, this will set Harris up to be criticized as a captive of soft Hollywood liberals, as the Clintons were in the 1990s when Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen would stay in the Lincoln Bedroom.
But Hollywood support is nonetheless crucial to Democratic candidates. And losing that support can be crushing, as George Clooney and Jeffrey Katzenberg proved in recent weeks, when Clooney called for Biden to step down in a New York Times op-ed, and Biden campaign co-chair Katzenberg had to deliver the message to the president that donors were pulling out in droves.
On a livestream call on Sunday with some 40,000 women of color — which included Beyoncé’s publicist Yvette Noel-Schure, “Professional Troublemaker” author Luvvie Ajayi Jones, as well as industry insiders, publicists, influencers and journalists — Harris energized one enormous part of her power base.
“People aren’t necessarily thinking about this as a Democrat or Republican winning. It’s like good and evil,” said one influential Hollywood journalist, who was on the call but declined to be identified. “So with Hollywood, more people than usual will be stepping up and speaking out. It’s not about alienating fan bases this time. It’s like, ‘If she doesn’t win, I won’t have a career or life to come back to because we will be dead.’”
She added: “It was giving ‘Ok, ladies, now let’s get in formation,’” the journalist said. “This is what must be done, failure is not an option.”
A longtime network
Harris also has a tight circle of powerful female friends in Hollywood that advise and support her, including Disney’s Walden, Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke and Sharon Klein, Disney’s head of TV casting.
Walden is a particularly close friend of many years, having met and been friends since 1994, according to an individual close to Walden. The rise of the two women is indeed remarkable. While Harris finds herself catapulted into a race for the Oval Office, Walden is Disney Entertainment co-chairman and is seen as a potential heir to CEO Bob Iger.
As Puck pointed out this week, Walden and her husband, Matt are among the closest in the industry to Harris and Emhoff, along with Reggie and Chrisette Hudlin.
At a 2022 fundraiser at the Waldens’ home, Harris recalled that the Hudlins introduced her on a blind date to Emhoff, after the Waldens introduced the Hudlins. “So, in many ways, Dana and Matt are responsible for my marriage,” she said according to the pool report. “But [they] have always been extraordinary friends.”
That said, Walden has stopped fundraising for her powerful friend, since as the head of Disney’s television business she runs ABC News, according to a knowledgeable Disney insider. (Though Donald Trump’s friendship with Rupert Murdoch hasn’t made Fox News shy about its support of the Republican candidate.)
Still, the excitement is palpable on the Disney lot, says the insider. “Every woman that I know at Disney is over the moon right now,” this person said. “It feels like an exciting moment.”
Of course there are plenty of cynical reasons for Hollywood to stay close to Harris. She has been a heartbeat away from the presidency for three years, and is a direct line to the center of power in Washington.
“Hollywood likes proximity to power and no one is more powerful than the president,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University film school. “She has a very good shot of being the next president. You’ll see people who may not have been her supporters come out of the woodwork.”
“All these people who supported Biden in Hollywood are going to switch to Kamala,” said Morain. “People believe that she actually stands a chance. Hollywood approaches things like the Oscars. If we think we can win with money, it’s no different.”
Natalie Korach contributed to this story.
