With Haley Hudson and fellow Pink Slip band member Daniel Rubin’s band Hudson Rubin, they have already released six original songs – Serpent, Mistakes, Hey Hey, What You Say?!, Gray Love, You Don’t Care and Hideaway, and they have plans for upcoming collaborations, live shows and further original music. As an actor, Haley played Peg in the 2003 Disney film Freaky Friday, and has recently reprised her role in the sequel Freakier Friday alongside original cast members Lindsay Lohan as Anna and Christina Vidal Mitchell as Maddie. Haley attended the Los Angeles film premiere at El Capitan Theatre, and with Pink Slip (who appeared in Freaky Friday and Freakier Friday), she performed songs from the original film both at the premiere and at Disneyland. Further acting projects for Haley include The Pact and working with Jennifer Aniston on the feature film Marley & Me. Answering our questions, Haley told us about her band Hudson Rubin with Daniel Rubin, playing Peg in the 2003 film Freaky Friday, reprising her role of Peg for the recent sequel Freakier Friday and performing with Pink Slip at the premiere and at Disneyland earlier this year.
You are part of the band Hudson Rubin, which you started with fellow Pink Slip band member Daniel Rubin; how did the idea come about to start releasing music as a band together?
The band actually came about by chance! Danny and I reunited on the set of Freakier Friday and just started playing music together under the stage at The Wiltern theatre. That eventually led to us writing original songs and, right after filming wrapped, we recorded one of them with Danny’s brother, Ilan Rubin, who’s the drummer in Foo Fighters and is also a music producer. We sent the song to the Disney music team as well as several of the Freakier Friday producers and they really liked it and encouraged us to continue, so we wrote and recorded more songs and they actually used one of them as background music in a scene in Freakier Friday!
What do you enjoy most about working with Daniel and releasing your own original music?
I love working with Danny because we get along so well and we’re usually on the same page musically. He’s an amazing person and is very talented!
Can you tell us about all six songs you have released so far – Serpent, Mistakes, Hey Hey, What You Say?!, Gray Love, You Don’t Care and Hideaway?
Yes, we worked on them for several months and were fortunate to work with Danny’s brothers Ilan and Aaron Rubin, as well as drummer Clint Disharoon. We have music videos on YouTube and have recently released our latest two songs – You Don’t Care, which features an incredible drum track by Ilan Rubin, and Hideaway, which I wrote and produced, that features my cousin, Sean Amato of the Tom Petty tribute band So Petty, on guitar.
Where do you get the inspiration from for your lyrics and do you have a songwriting process?
I always write the melody first and then start coming up with words that I think sound good in different parts of the song. Then I form lyrics around the words. Sometimes I write the music and lyrics for a song and then Danny adds more music to it or sometimes Danny will write all of the music first and then I write a melody and lyrics to go with it.
What have your recently-released songs been like to write and record and how long have you been working on them?
That’s a tough question because sometimes Danny and I will finish writing a song in just a few days and sometimes one of us will come up with an idea but then we’ll delay working on it for a while. Danny and I sometimes write multiple versions of the same song and then record the version we like the most. So it’s always different.
Who do you think Hudson Rubin’s music will appeal to?
I think we have several songs that might appeal to younger people, like Hey Hey, What You Say?!, but then we also have songs with more mature lyrics, like our upcoming Taime. All of our songs sound pretty different, so I think they could appeal to a lot of different types of people.
As an actor, you have just reprised your role of Peg in the new feature film Freakier Friday, how was it returning to the franchise and getting back into character?
Pretty great! The best part for me was being reunited with the cast after such a long time and playing music together again!
What was it like finding out there would be a sequel to Freaky Friday and how was it reading the script for the first time?
I was really happy for everyone involved and when I found out we were going to be playing music again as Pink Slip, I was ecstatic!
How was it reuniting with the original cast members, which includes Lindsay Lohan as Anna and Christina Vidal Mitchell as Maddie, and being directed by the Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra?
Amazing but also surreal because we were basically having the same experience that we’d had on the first film, just over two decades later. So a lot of people in the cast are very different now and we’ve all had so many life experiences between the two films. It sort of felt like going to a 20-year high school reunion, but you’re also filming a movie at the same time!
How did you find the experience attending the Los Angeles film premiere at the El Capitan Theatre and how has it been seeing the fan response to the release?
The premiere was fun because we got to play live on stage as Pink Slip! The response we’ve gotten so far has been great and we’re very happy that so many people enjoyed the film!
What was it like performing Take Me Away with Pink Slip live at the premiere and at Disneyland?
We all had a great time and it felt like we were a real band! It was amazing to meet fans at those events too, because they were so excited to be there and see us playing the songs from the movie.
What are some of your stand-out memories from working on the 2003 Freaky Friday film?
Definitely playing on stage at the House of Blues. But the whole shoot was great!
Do you remember how you felt originally booking the role of Peg, and what is she like to play?
Well, it was kind of an unusual experience because Peg didn’t actually exist when I auditioned for the original Freaky Friday. They were rewriting the screenplay as they were auditioning people, so they were using scenes from an earlier script that was completely different than the one we ended up using. In that draft, there was no Pink Slip and Anna was more of a nerdy, bookish character. A couple of months after my audition, I got a phone call that I’d been cast and they told me that they’d created a role for me based on my audition. I always felt like Peg was just this unique girl who had her own way of doing things but didn’t feel the need to draw attention to herself. She was just happy playing guitar in a band and didn’t really care what people thought of her.
You have also been part of many other acting projects including The Pact, Weeds, Marley & Me and Lizzie McGuire, can you tell us about your further acting career?
The Pact and Marley & Me were stand-out experiences.
Marley & Me was great because I got to go to Miami and film scenes with Jennifer Aniston, who I’m a huge fan of. The whole cast and crew were wonderful and the director, David Frankel, was the kindest person and so great to work with.
The Pact was cool because I got to play a blind psychic, which is a kind of role that certainly doesn’t come around very often! We were accepted into the Sundance Film Festival and the movie was successful and got good reviews. It kind of has a cult following now.
Where does your love of acting and music come from and how did you get into both?
I started singing and playing piano and violin when I was pretty young. I was really into jazz music and got to perform with some great jazz artists like Diana Krall at a young age. She invited me to sing with her at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival when I was 11, which was quite an experience. I got serious about acting when I took a class in high school and then figured since I was in LA, I might as well try to pursue acting. I started auditioning just a few months before being cast in Freaky Friday.
What are some of your favourite films and TV shows to watch, and music artists to listen to?
When I was a kid, I loved The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz, as well as movies like Beetlejuice and Jurassic Park. As a teen and young adult, I liked mainstream stuff like Friends and The O.C., but was also into independent films like Junebug, Amelie, and Lars and the Real Girl. My favorite TV show of recent years is probably Only Murders in the Building.
As far as music goes, I like a lot of different genres. Danny and I recently saw Oasis perform at the Rose Bowl and that was a dream come true because they’ve always been one of my favorite bands.
How do you like to spend your free time?
Reading books, learning foreign languages, or going on day trips around LA.
Do you have any upcoming career/release plans that you can share, and what are you hoping the next few months bring you?
Danny and I have some collaborations coming up soon with some really incredible musicians and I’m probably going to be working on music with some other members of Pink Slip in the future. We also might be doing some live shows in LA pretty soon that I will be posting about on my Instagram page. We’ll be releasing some new Hudson Rubin songs soon, so stay tuned!
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