It was a baptism by Hollywood.
In 1994, Kamala Harris was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, working across the San Francisco Bay, but already of some renown in San Francisco for her relationship with local power broker (and future mayor) Willie Brown. At Brown’s surprise 60th birthday party, Herb Caen, the legendary city columnist, introduced Harris, 29, as Brown’s “new steady” to Clint Eastwood, fresh off two of the biggest hits of his career, Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire.
He promptly spilled champagne on her.
Thirty years later, with Vice President Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for president after President Joe Biden stepped aside as the candidate on July 21, Hollywood is popping corks: A person they see as one of their own is in position to become the leader of the free world. Donations, which froze in the wake of Biden’s disastrous debate performance and subsequent efforts to stanch the damage, flowed in at a record-breaking $81 million clip over the first 24 hours of Harris’ candidacy, and she received endorsements from virtually every notable party figure.
Harris’ career may have started in the Bay Area, but entertainment luminaries have always played a part in her ascent, from her winning San Francisco DA campaign to California Attorney General to U.S. Senator to Vice President.
Barry Diller, who earlier this month told me he was no longer supporting Biden’s campaign, has a history with Harris. During a week-long trip to Los Angeles in June 2022, Diller attended “a gathering of old friends” at Bryan Lourd’s house, which included Harris, Kevin Huvane, Greg Berlanti, Allison Janney, Kareem Daniel, Paul Thomas Anderson and SNL’s Harris impersonator, Maya Rudolph. “What I thought of Kamala Harris when I met her was that she was smart and engaging,” he tells me today. “What I think of her now is that she’s a champion — what she did in the hours after Biden exited was masterful, cleaning the field. Do not underestimate her, and yes, whatever weight I’ve got is behind her.”
Sherry Lansing, meanwhile, has known Harris since she was the San Francisco DA and met her at a quiet dinner. Harris, Lansing said, lit up the room with her warmth and kindness, qualities that persist to this day. Combine that with her “keen intelligence” and optimism mixed with pragmatism, and you have what Lansing believes is someone equipped to succeed in every job she’s ever taken — and will take.
“She is authentic,” Lansing tells me. “Her decency combined with this incredible intelligence and idealism and pragmatism comes through. But what you see is she’s maintained her authenticity . . . she’s a highly principled, ethical person, and no matter what her connections are, she’s going to do what’s right for the country.”
When Harris burst onto the scene to become the San Francisco district attorney, Chris Rock and her longtime pal Dana Walden contributed to her distinct fundraising advantage. When she faced off against an established Los Angeles County DA for California attorney general in 2010, she dazzled Hollywood crowds and secured their donation dollars. In 2019, when she ran for president, the one glimmer of hope in an otherwise disappointing campaign was her widespread support from the entertainment industry — something that no other candidate had going for them. And in 2020, when President Biden was choosing a Vice President, Bryan Lourd strongly advocated on her behalf.
Harris lived in Brentwood before moving to Washington D.C. and still has a home there with her husband Doug Emhoff, the entertainment lawyer she met on a blind date that was arranged by Chrisette Hudlin, the wife of producer-director Reginald Hudlin. Her political benefactors are also her friends: Before the pandemic and Harris winning the vice presidency, one could find Walden, Harris and their husbands at such Westside dining haunts such as Toscana in Brentwood and El Cholo in Santa Monica.
A potential Harris presidency would mean the most Hollywood-connected administration since Ronald Reagan. Among the many firsts that a President Harris would represent, she’d be the first Democratic president from California. What that means for policy and the party’s big Hollywood donors is unclear.
Hollywood falls in love with a fairy tale, often to its detriment, whether it was Jeffrey Katzenberg’s (failed) attempt to present Biden’s age as his superpower or the mythologizing of J.D. Vance’s hardscrabble youth.
Yet Hollywood’s decades-long embrace of Harris feels different.
When Harris ran to be San Francisco’s District Attorney in 2003, her one-time romantic relationship with Brown, who had appointed Harris to a high-paying government job, would prove controversial (and likely will come up again in her 2024 race). In a competitive three-candidate field featuring an incumbent, where she was in third place for much of the race, Harris delivered a sharp rebuttal to the Brown attack in a debate, warranting a standing ovation from the audience and creating some momentum. An endorsement from the Chronicle helped, too.
That ability to “make them understand that if they’re going to try to hurt you, they’re going to get more hurt,” in the words of Harris’ then-political advisor, won her more fans not only in San Francisco but Los Angeles as well. Her diverse Indian-American and Jamaican-American heritage was also a plus.
In addition to Rock and Walden, Harris also counted in her corner Delroy Lindo, Eddie Griffin — who is now staunchly against Harris and pro-Trump — and The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder. “Aaron McGruder is supporting me. He’s a close friend of mind, if that means anything to you,” Harris told a pair of young men working at a comic-book shop during her DA race, years before McGruder’s cult-favorite comic became a TV series.
Those connections helped fuel her fundraising capabilities, which propelled Harris’ upset victory. By the end of the campaign, she had raised and spent so much money that the city’s ethics commission found Harris violated a pledge not to exceed a voluntary $211,000 spending cap, which her campaign deemed a misunderstanding.
Harris was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run, which got the attention of a wider array of Obama’s Hollywood’s supporters, a plus after she decided to run for state attorney general after Obama’s win. As the LAT noted in a column titled “After Obama, here’s Kamala” in early 2009:
Actually, the Hollywood buzz surrounding the 44-year-old Harris began even before she decided to run for AG. As an early Barack Obama supporter, she was one of the first on the campaign trail and was almost immediately recognized in the entertainment circles as a rising star.
By spring, she was a frequent visitor at the estates of Beverly Park and Brentwood, this time campaigning on behalf of her own candidacy. Everywhere she went, the crowds were wowed. She’s articulate and beautiful, sort of like a political version of Halle Berry.
That was quite a pitch, but as Harris’ campaign manager for AG, Brian Brokaw, said at the time, “If we learned one thing from Hollywood’s early and active support of Barack Obama, it’s that the entertainment community has an eye for new leadership and innovative ideas.”
Just as with her first San Francisco DA race, Harris started down in the polls to an older white guy, Los Angeles County DA Steve Cooley. But like Obama, her “compelling life story,” willingness to own up to her mistakes and fresh policy proposals (she had won accolades for her “smart on crime” initiatives) enticed Hollywood donors.
I reached Brokaw earlier today, and he recalled how he and Harris trekked down to Los Angeles, knowing that her “star power” that likened her to young political leaders like Obama would be irresistible.
They dropped by William Morris, Brokaw tells me, as well as CAA, where they met with Kevin Huvane in his office, who talked about all the people he was going to introduce her to and all the people in Hollywood that would love her. “There were a lot of movers and shakers in the entertainment industry that, I think, identified her early on as somebody who had great potential,” Brokaw says, “and I distinctly remember people saying, ‘She could be president one day!’”
Among those who threw fundraisers for Harris during her AG run were Sherry Lansing, Ron Meyer, Steven Bochco, Brett Ratner, Eric Dane, Antoine Fuqua, Chuck Lorre and Laura Wasserman.
Those who donated to Harris’ 2010 campaign are almost too many to name but they include: J.J. Abrams, Clarence Avant, Tyra Banks, James Brooks, Laurie David, Jamie Foxx, Norman Lear, Lisa Ling, Michael Lynton, Holly Robinson Peete, Sean Penn, Charles Rivkin, Aaron Sorkin, Andy Spahn and Steven Spielberg.
Despite trailing early on, Harris won the election by a close 46.1-45.3 percent margin, swaying the hearts and minds of Hollywood in the process.
“The conventional wisdom was that the Democrats would win every statewide office except for attorney general, and that was just accepted,” Brokaw recalls. “I heard that from people, including the California Democratic Party chair at the time. Cooley probably thought he could cruise to victory, and she outworked him.”
Even before Harris moved to Brentwood in 2014, she was a frequent presence around town, attending parties and premieres.
In 2013, Abrams penned a praising tribute to his friend for Vanity Fair. In it, he talked about how impressed he was meeting her when she was still the San Francisco DA, and how she’s “deeply decent, and wise well beyond her years,” among other laudatory remarks.
In short, Kamala Harris is the protagonist of a great story. In this particular narrative, the monsters that threaten public safety, our environment and educational system, the country’s homeowners and elderly, health care and marriage equality, aren’t as easy to market or as pyrotechnically awe-inspiring as what a Hollywood visual-effects house might create, but they are the threats we face and they’re very real.
That same year, Harris met her soon-to-be husband. However, her blind date meet-cute had even deeper Hollywood ties, as Harris later recounted during a 2022 fundraiser at Walden’s home. As it turns out, Dana and her husband Matt had introduced the Hudlins on a blind date.
“Dana and Matt introduced on a blind date Chrisette Hudlin and Reggie Hudlin, who then introduced on a blind date me and Doug,” Harris said. “So, in many ways, Dana and Matt are responsible for my marriage.”
Harris’ supports extends across town to other studios as well, even if they weren’t two degrees from introducing her to her husband. Donna Langley is another Harris ally, who supported her California AG run in 2010 and later her presidential campaign in the 2020 cycle, co-hosting a fundraiser.
Harris introduced Langley at a Variety “Power of Women” event in 2014 by praising her work ethic, her parenting and Universal’s strong showing at that year’s box office. “My mother had a saying that she would speak to me and my sister,” Harris said, “and she would say to me, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.’ Donna Langley lives those words.”
For Damon Lindelof, who was “wildly impressed” by the veep at an event when she ran for AG, another interaction a couple years later cemented his impression. Lindelof and his wife Heidi were eating breakfast at one of their usual spots, and Harris and Emhoff, dressed in workout clothes and covered in sweat from a spin class they took together, came in to get a coffee.
“[We] were like, the last thing they want to do is be spotted right now, they barely know us . . . BUT — Kamala looked over and smiled . . . and then they both came over, sat down at our table and chatted,” Lindelof wrote me in an email. “Absolutely awesome, authentic, human beings.” He closed his note, “Coconut-Pilled, Damon.” (As you can see below, he’s not the only one.)
The rising star made inroads in L.A. music business, too, with Harris being described as “joined at the hip” with music industry veterans Troy Carter and Daniel Glass. She also formed a strong base of support among other music business players such as Scooter Braun and RocNation CEO Jay Brown.
“For her, it’s not about meeting big stars and having them do benefits: It’s about rights,” said Glass. “And coming from California, with its very strong entertainment [industry], she really understands what is needed on both sides — the artist/creator side and the entrepreneurial side. She cares about small businesses, the independent spirit and the underdog, and that’s what we need in government.”
In 2016, Harris ran for Barbara Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat when Boxer retired, and Harris once again turned to her Hollywood friends for a boost, though unlike her early career races she hardly needed it. By November, Harris had raised more than $14.5 million compared with her opponent Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s $4 million. Among those aiding her in that fundraising lead was then ICM chief Chris Silbermann and music attorney Aaron Rappaport, who both held fundraisers for the Senate hopeful.
Harris would go on to defeat Sanchez by a whopping 23 percentage points, earning herself a ticket to Washington, where she and Emhoff would spend their time when not at home in Brentwood.
Then came the big one: the presidency. On MLK Day in 2019, Harris entered the race for President, facing off what would become a large field of Democratic hopefuls for a chance to dethrone President Trump. Almost immediately, Harris had the overwhelming support of the Hollywood elite.
An LA Times analysis from November 2019 had Harris at 70 celebrity donors, with Pete Buttigieg in second place (42) and eventual primary winner Biden with just 13. Before dropping out in December 2019, she’d raised more than $1.5 million from the entertainment industry.
Among her fundraiser hosts: Jessica Alba, Ari Emanuel, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Kives, Spike Lee, and Lindelof. Many more local luminaries — Anthony Anderson, Jason Blum, Ariana Grande, George Lucas, Bette Midler, Katy Perry and Shonda Rhimes all donated near or at the maximum allowed donation of $5,600.
Harris dropped out of the race when it became clear she had no chance of triumphing, but when Biden named her as his running mate, her Hollywood ties played a pivotal part in the Biden campaign’s fundraising efforts, featuring an event chaired by Ryan Murphy and hosted by Bela Bajaria, Don Cheadle and Michael Rotenberg as well as Blum and Chuck Lorre.
During the 2022 midterms, you could again find Harris at Walden’s home, where about 30 people — including Murphy, Abrams and Reggie Hudlin — raised roughly $1 million for the DNC.
Now Harris is back in the presidential mix, canvassing for donations and endorsements as she prepares to take on Trump. Of course, Harris and Emhoff had already been quietly building support for the Biden-Harris ticket. “Just six weeks ago, we hosted an event with the Second Gentlemen for about 50 men to talk reproductive rights with Amanda & Josh Zurawski from Texas and an abortion provider from Montana,” Lindelof tells me. “An incredible and powerful night. This isn’t just a ‘issue’ for them . . . they truly and genuinely care about what’s happening to women in this country.”
Just two days into the campaign with Harris at the top of the ticket, her fundraising totals continue to soar, surpassing $100 million by Monday night. The haul came from more than 1.1 million unique donors, according to her campaign, with 62 percent of them first-time donors.
Given Hollywood’s longtime support for Harris, it’s hard to imagine any of them were new to giving.
After all, Harris is homegrown talent.
