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Kate Hudson rates the Super Bowl hunks

Kate Hudson was in New York to promote her new romantic comedy, “Fool’s Gold,” but the New England Patriots’ fan first had to critique a couple of hot quarterbacks she saw in action while attending her first Super Bowl.
/ Source: TODAY contributor

Kate Hudson was in New York to promote her new romantic comedy, “Fool’s Gold,” but the New England Patriots’ fan first had to critique a couple of hot quarterbacks she saw in action while attending her first Super Bowl.

So which would it be, TODAY co-host Matt Lauer wanted to know on Wednesday: New England quarterback and supermodel-dater Tom Brady or New York quarterback and boy-next-door Eli Manning?

“Why would you put me on the spot like that?” Hudson said, flashing a smile that seems to be on permanent loan from her mother, actress Goldie Hawn. “They both are charming. Brady’s definitely the handsome, kind of strapping type. Eli’s kind of like the bring-home-to-mom type.”

Hudson said she’d met Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft and his family while filming the yet-to-be-released “Bachelor No. 2” in Boston. Kraft invited her to several football games as well as the Super Bowl, which she attended with Kurt Russell, her mother’s longtime boyfriend and the man she thinks of as her real father.

“I’d never been to the Super Bowl and we are a huge football family,” she said.

Talk of hunky quarterbacks segued into a discussion of her and her “Fool’s Gold” co-star, Matthew McConaughey, with whom she had shot the 2003 box-office hit “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”

What, Lauer asked, is the secret to the on-screen chemistry she and McConaughey have?

“I really don’t know what it is,” the 28-year-old star said. “The only thing I can really think of is we’re really honest with each other, and we really love each other and then we really can’t stand each other at times. It’s just really an honest relationship. He is who he is. He’s totally charming. I love all of his eccentricities.”

In “Fool’s Gold,” McConaughey plays the role of Finn, a treasure-hunter who needs money to search for a sunken horde — the “Queen’s Dowry.” He and Hudson’s character, Tess Finnegan, had married in passion and are now separated and in the process of getting divorced.

Fate puts them together when Finn gets financial help from billionaire Nigel Honeycutt, played by Donald Sutherland, who also offers his mega-yacht, on which Tess Finnegan is working. That’s when the fireworks start. The film opens Friday.

Hudson said she and McConaughey were a little leery of doing another film together after the success of “How to Lose a Guy.”

“So many people wanted us to be together again,” she said. “We were both kind of cautious of what kind of movie and how to go about it. And this just kind of fit. It’s totally different, but the dynamic is kind of similar in terms of the romance and the banter.”

Hudson had to learn to scuba dive for the movie, which she has said was somewhat traumatic because she has a fear of sharks. But once she got into it, she said, it was an amazing experience. The crew was on location for six months in Australia filming the movie, and during filming Hudson finalized her divorce from Chris Robinson, the front man for the Black Crowes, after seven years of marriage.

The two have a son, Ryder, who just turned 4, and Hudson took him to Australia. The experience, she told Lauer, “was the best thing that could have possibly happened for me at that time. It was such an amazing experience. It was good for all of us. Being in Australia is so beautiful.”

When talking of Ryder, Hudson lights up. “He’s great — four years old,” she said. “He’s starting to play sports. I got him signed up for soccer and T-ball. I’m really excited about this phase of our lives.”