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The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Nate Hudson: Actor, Writer and Friendly Face

Photo+by+Maya+Raitt18.
Photo by Maya Raitt’18.
Photo by Maya Raitt'18.
Photo by Maya Raitt’18.

Unassuming and friendly, Nate Hudson begins to greet a large influx of Macalester students as they pour into the Loch at 2:20 p.m. As students write down what they want, Hudson greets each one with the same demeanor: amiable and energetic.

Behind the counter, Hudson and his coworker are organizing pizzas, calzones, sandwiches and salads in a calculated system that holds many students over until dinner. If it were not for Hudson, the operation would be merely a well-oiled machine. But Hudson adds a certain spunk that makes the Loch an ideal place to grab some grub, and that’s what he’s known for.

Yet there are several things students do not know about Hudson. For instance, he’s written twelve chapters of what he expects to be a sixteen chapter book. He writes and performs music with his older brother Jeremiah, which he shares with the internet via Soundcloud. He is a vegetarian of two years. He aspires to be an actor.

While his job with Bon Appetit at Macalester is his favorite job to this point, to be it seems only one stop out of many in the grand scheme of his life. He aims to do much greater things in his future.

Nathaniel Hudson was born on January 5th, 1995 in St. Paul. One of eight children that now span from five to thirty-two years old, he is one of two in the family who are adopted.

The family lived in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, which Hudson remembers was “crazy,” because there were often fights. But he also remembers that there were lots of kids and his time was often consumed by playing with friends. When he was around fourteen years old, Hudson says he would take apart bicycles and put them back together, and with that experience, taught other people how to do the same.

When he was fifteen, his family moved to Georgia with his mother. Yet Georgia proved to be only a temporary home for Hudson, who couldn’t find a job and wasn’t making many friends.

So he entered the Jobs Corps program, a system designed for the simultaneous completion of a high school diploma and learning of a specific trade. Pouncing on this opportunity, Hudson moved to an old military base amidst acres of cornfields in Kentucky. He stayed there for about nine months, earning a high school diploma and a culinary certificate. This was the eighth school he had attended between kindergarten and twelfth grade.

After graduating, he moved back to St. Paul, where he did not initially have a place to stay. Hudson moved into a homeless shelter, looking for residence and employment. It wasn’t very long until Hudson’s “godmom,” his mother’s best friend, took him in.

His first job was at a Jimmy John’s, but with a culinary certificate in his back pocket, Hudson worked later as the executive chef at a Knights of Columbus franchise for eight months, and was subsequently a line cook for three months at The Liffey, an Irish pub located across from the Xcel Center.

Hudson was hired last summer as a food service worker with Bon Appetit at Macalester. It has been by-and-large his favorite job. With a large grin on his face, Hudson reasons that, “Everyone is around my age and its so much fun to work with people who you can identify with.”

Hudson’s love for Macalester extends beyond the walls of the Campus Center, however. Recently, he has started attending hockey games and even attended a Kagin dance. It wouldn’t have been an option if he wasn’t so friendly with the students. Several asked him if he would come and says he didn’t regret a second of it.

Hudson is aware of the parallel he shares with students, though he does not partake in academia. “Most of the time, if I just did homework, I would be a student,” he says. “I thought about it, but I couldn’t do four years.”

Instead, Hudson fills his time with a host of other activities. The book he is writing he plans to call “Secrets.” The story is about eight young miscreant teenagers who all live in a boot-camp for some wrong they are accused of doing. Each thirteen or fourteen year old has a secret that none of the others know. The campers escape, and several deaths occur. The dramatic interrelationships of the teenagers make the story exciting.

On top of writing fiction, Hudson writes rap music. Whenever he can, Hudson takes this music to what he claims to be the best studio in St. Paul with his brother Jeremiah. They pay 20-30 dollars per hour. While his brother manages the technical parts of production, Hudson takes a couple of the pieces he writes at home and applies them to ‘trap beats’.

His most recent song, called “Trained 2 Go,” says that in life you have to “go hard or go home,” Hudson explains, “Go to school, do homework, whatever you choose to do, do your best. I’ve been raised to do that, to be successful at whatever you do, like I say in the song.”

Hudson said he briefly met T.I. and that his playlists also play in the background of Minnesota Timberwolves basketball games.

Hudson’s largest aspiration is to be an actor and screenplay writer. This he hopes he will achieve when people recognize his writing. Rappers and other musical artists also make their way into the film industry on occasion, and Hudson perceives this as a possible route.

These aspirations seem larger than life, especially in an entertainment business that is extremely difficult to crack into. For now, Hudson will continue writing books and lyrics when he’s not working.

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