Kurt Russell and son Wyatt gush about ‘magical’ Muskoka on Dax Shepard’s podcast

In between playing Snake Plissken in Escape from L.A., the Commander in Sky High or Mike in Death Proof — Kurt Russell spent his summers in Muskoka, basking in the lake with his son, Wyatt and wife, Goldie Hawn.

Kurt and Wyatt Russell, in their appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast to promote their new Apple TV show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, effused about the majesty of Ontario’s cottage country, where they spent summers in the mid- to late-aughts.

The Russell’s in Muskoka

The Russell’s bought their Muskoka house in 1996 when Wyatt was ten. He recalled during the interview that it “shaped every great experience that I ever had.”

“We joked that it was like Hogwarts,” Wyatt went on. “If you knew about it, you knew. Since then, it’s blown up. It’s become a whole different place.”

Back when the Russell family vacationed there, their trips to Muskoka had “a very magical feeling,” Wyatt explained. With no cellphones, poor internet connection and no social media, “you completely left everything behind, and you had 14 days, or whatever it was, to just actually be with the people that you loved.”

Explaining excitedly at the top of the podcast, Shepard said he first met the Russell’s in Muskoka when he was dating Kate Hudson, Hawn’s daughter from a previous marriage and Wyatt’s half-sister.

“And you go swimming in that water — it’s medicinal,” Shepard added. “Every morning I jumped in and I f — cking swam across the little bay.”

Wyatt Russell’s short-lived hockey career in Canada

Reflecting on his potential life as a hockey player, Wyatt told Shepard he found it difficult to balance both his artistic tendencies and his athleticism.

“It’s a blue-collar Canadian sport,” the California-born Wyatt said. “So, when I was instrumental … if I did that too much, my coaches and some of the people that were gatekeepers for hockey would go, ‘oh, he’s not interested in really being a hockey player, he wants to go into the arts.’”

Wyatt played as a goalie in both B.C. and Ontario junior leagues, playing for the Langley Hornets, Coquitlam Express and the Brampton Capitals from 2003 to 2007.

“So, you’re completely trying your very f — cking hardest to show them. I’m going to buzz my hair, I’m going to be like this soldier who’s going to do my job and put my head down.”

As an example of how high expectations were for him to commit to hockey, Wyatt recalls being benched one game after a coach caught him wearing flip flops in the hallways of the hotel they were staying at before a road game.

“But, you do have to understand that the Canadian athlete may be the last athlete on the planet that truly has a lot of respect for authority,” Kurt chimed in.

The Russell family moved to Canada to support Wyatt’s hockey career, while both Kurt and Hawn, took a break from acting. Kurt, who had at that point just starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, said he was “much more interested in making wine and learning about wine … making Burgundian red wine.”

Wyatt left his hockey career in 2010 after a hip injury while playing for a minor professional team in the Netherlands and made the turn to acting soon after. The pair now star in their first project together, a show on Apple TV, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, where Wyatt and Kurt play the same character but at different points in time.