For someone who giggles constantly and coos “Aw, that’s so sweet” every other sentence, beauty mogul and budding reality-show superstar Huda Kattan can sure be, well, a beeyotch.
“I came off really harsh,” the mega-influencer says of a particularly attitudinal episode of “Huda Boss,” her half-hour reality show on Facebook Watch. “I feel like I came off really, really bitchy. And I’m not really that bitchy.”
Calling us from Huda Beauty world headquarters in Dubai, the 34-year-old makeup artist and entrepreneur is friendly and feisty, sharing what it was like having a film crew document her life for months on end. The show is a warts-and-all look at her brand’s explosive growth — and the toll it’s taking on her tight-knit family. Her sisters, Mona and Alya, husband, Chris, and father, Ibrahim, all have roles in her cosmetics empire. Too many launches, too many photo shoots, too much globe-trotting with way too much luggage — it isn’t always pretty.
But it is funny and relatable. Well, as relatable as a show about a glamazon worth an estimated $550 million can be. Huda even encouraged the use of hilarious on-screen thought bubbles that poke fun at pretty much everyone. “I said, ‘They need to be sarcastic. Make fun of us.’”
As the majority stakeholder of Huda Beauty, now valued at $1 billion (just five years after launching), and a producer of the show, Huda has enough clout to break the rules.
“During the filming process, they were like, ‘You don’t understand how this works,’ “says Huda, the Oklahoma City-born daughter of Iraqi immigrants. “And I was like, ‘You’re right. I’m in Dubai. I don’t care about Hollywood.’ ”
Kattan surprised herself with her own vulnerability. “You don’t expect to cry on camera, and then you’re crying. Someone asked me about my name, and I started talking about wanting to fit in when I was younger, and I just started bawling.”
Of course, she can always cheer herself up with playful new products, like her Easy Bake loose powders and a makeup primer inspired by milk of magnesia. Or she can tend to her nearly 27 million Instagram followers with beat-the-clock content, like the “elevator challenge.” Watch Episode 7 to see Kattan apply her gazillion-step makeup look in the mere seconds it takes an elevator to make it from the basement of an office building to the 27th floor.
The episode also features the aforementioned “bitchy” moment, as she describes it: “Mona goes to Grasse, France, to work on a fragrance project, while I’m back in the office.”
“We’re talking about Season 2, but I’d like to do it a little differently,” Kattan says. “I don’t want it scripted, but I do want to have some idea of, like, ‘OK, we’re going here and we’re shooting that,’ as opposed to, ‘We’re just following you and shooting a lot, and then we’ll just take bits and pieces of it.’ That was exhausting. And I do have a real job, you know.”
