Oliver Hudson Talks Pressure of Growing Up with ‘Icon’ Mom Goldie Hawn: ‘I Wrestle with Insecurity’

The actor is one of 14 stars competing on season 5 of ‘Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test’

Oliver Hudson is not trying to hide the fact that his famous family comes with high expectations.

The son of Goldie Hawn, brother to Kate Hudson and Wyatt Russell, and stepson of Kurt Russell, Oliver, 50, opened up about the sense of comparison he struggles with during the premiere episode of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

The actor competed alongside 13 other celebrities on the hit FOX reality series, which puts them through grueling challenges inspired by the real-life U.S. Special Forces selection process.

In his introductory package, Oliver spoke about his famous family and revealed how they motivated his decision to compete on the show.

“Coming from a successful family, I wrestle with comparison. I wrestle with insecurity,” he said in a confessional. “My mother’s an icon, so a part of me feels like I have to accomplish something greater for them to be truly proud of me.”

It’s nothing new for Oliver to comment on — or joke about — how he was raised. On last year’s Great American Baking Show: Celebrity Holiday special, after he received positive feedback from the judges, he said, “It felt good. Coming from a family of very famous people, I don’t get a lot of wins.”

“I can maybe rub it in their face. ‘What do you got? Huh? Almost Famous?’ ‘What’s an Oscar? What, a Golden Globe? You don’t have the plate,’” he quipped, referring to the Baking Show trophy.

He previously had to clarify comments he’d made about childhood “trauma” he’d experienced growing up with Hawn, 80, who was married to Oliver and Kate’s dad, Bill Hudson, from 1976 to 1982, but primarily raised the two kids with Russell, her longtime partner.

“I felt unprotected at times. She would be working and away or she had new boyfriends that I didn’t really like,” he said on his and Kate’s podcast, Sibling Revelry, in 2024. “She would be living her life, and she was an amazing mother. This was my own perception as a child who didn’t have a dad and who needed her to be there, and she just wasn’t sometimes.”

Oliver later said that he “got in a little bit of heat” with Hawn over what he’d said and set the record straight. “If you listen to the whole thing, it’s more about sort of my child feelings in that moment rather than me and how I feel about Mom as a parent,” he said on a later episode.

“I don’t know who I would be without my mother. I can’t even fathom it. The love that I have for her and the respect and the reverence that I have for her is beyond anything. So it was just, you know, completely taken out of context.”

New episodes of Special Forces season 5 air Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on FOX.

Via: People