Reese Witherspoon reflected on a life-changing moment at the beginning of her production company Hello Sunshine.
During a panel discussion of Hello Sunshine’s Second Shine Away event in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 5, 2024, Reese recalled an “aha moment” which made her take one of the toughest decisions of her life.
“There's a moment in all of our lives when you realize, ‘No, wait, no one's coming to help, no one's coming to make that decision. For me, I have to make that decision.’ I've had a lot of those,” she said.
Reflecting on founding her new production company in 2016, after absorbing the previous one, Pacific Standard, Reese recalled, "I remember I had a moment when I was right after Big Little Lies and I had self-funded my first company.”
Despite the success of her HBO series and projects like Big Little Lies and Wild, Reese thought her new business venture will be a flush, however it wasn’t the case at that time.
The Morning Show star thought to herself, “Okay, well, Big Little Lies won all these Emmys and Wild and Gone Girl got all these Oscar nominations and we made 600 million in the box office,” but, in reality, she “had four employees and I couldn't keep the lights on.”
However, Reese’s mindset was changed after her accountant called and said something that changed the actress’ perspective.
“I remember the accountant calling me going, ‘You didn't make enough money producing those three things to keep four employees,’” she said.
“I was like, ‘I'm doing something wrong.’ And that's when I had this aha moment. I was like, I need to have help. I don't have a business plan," Reese added.
That moment made Reese Witherspoon realize "I had to reach out for help, and that's when I had a friend help me create a business plan."
“So that's when Sarah Harden came in — who's our amazing CEO — and we had secure funding, but I had no idea how to hire executives and create infrastructure and get lawyers and business affairs and financial people,” she said of Sarah, who was also in attendance at the event.
