Olivia Wilde is currently promoting The Invite, which she stars in and directed. The Invite is the first film she directed since the extremely messy situation with 2022’s Don’t Worry Darling, which was her second film as director. Gossip nostalgia: during DWD’s production, Olivia allegedly left Jason Sudeikis for Harry Styles, fought with Florence Pugh and was so toxic to several actors, they later called her out on her lies and BS. Olivia’s behavior was so ridiculous and her lies so outrageous, she had Shia LaBeouf looking like a model of sobriety. One of the stories which I still find absolutely bonkers is that Olivia was so enamored with Harry Styles, she would go off with Harry and she wasn’t even on the set to direct several scenes. That was seemingly the root of Olivia and Florence Pugh’s beef as well. Why this trip down memory lane? Because Olivia referenced some of this in her cover profile in The Cut. Some highlights:
The rumors about Don’t Worry Darling: Tabloids revealed she was dating Harry Styles, her decade-younger co-star, and reported on alleged major friction between star Florence Pugh and Wilde. The buzz was bad. “I have never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set. I wanted to be like, ‘None of this is true,’” she now says about those rumors.
The backlash hurt her: Still, the experience took its toll. Hollywood “has robbed me of my naïveté for sure,” Wilde says. “I deeply hate the feeling of being misunderstood, too.” Jennifer Garner schooled her early in her career, when they starred together in a 2011 indie film called Butter, about how actresses get categorized. “She said it’s like you get cast in a soap opera by the public,” Wilde remembers. “And they assign you an obvious archetype: the damsel in distress, the good girl, the pretty girl.” Wilde says she was initially cast as “an object of desire.” But in the past few years, she feels her character was rewritten: “I became the full-on villain. Like Cruella.”
She doesn’t regret her relationship with Harry Styles: She describes that relationship to me as “loving and wonderful and joyful.” (The pair dated for around two years until late 2022.) But she hates that she didn’t directly, publicly acknowledge the negative buzz around the film and her personal life. The studio and others involved wanted her to stay stoic. “I was told, ‘Don’t say a f–king word. Just go out there and smile,’” she recalls, shaking her head. “I resent that, but it taught me it’s not the way I want to handle things.”
Rebuilding: After Don’t Worry Darling, Wilde took a few years to rebuild herself and do some therapy. She read books by Eve Babitz and Carrie Fisher and started journaling. “I don’t think you know what you’re made of until you fall apart. I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t had their heart broken,” she says. “If you can push through the moment you have previously identified as the worst possible thing that could happen to you, whether that is divorce or the internet hating you or whatever, you are forged into something way better than you could have possibly imagined.”
Coparenting with Jason Sudeikis. “We’re very, very, very different people who are certainly much better as friends and co-parents,” Wilde says matter-of-factly of Sudeikis. The children alternate weeks between Mom and Dad, and according to her, the arrangement is “flexible and fluid.”
She’s probably dating art dealer Caspar Jopling: She’s been cautious about how to refer to her relationship in public. “When you’re with someone who’s not in the entertainment industry or isn’t a public figure, I have a sense of, I want to protect this person as much as I can.” But she’s excited. “I’m in a really lovely relationship now. I adore him, and I feel completely whole and intact as a person,” says Wilde, flashing a grin. “I think it’s only possible after spending a couple years alone. If you haven’t ever been single for a few years, how do you even know who you are?”
What’s funny about the “they advised me not to say anything” is that it was probably her publicist trying to do damage-control on all of Olivia’s lies. I even wrote that in my coverage at the time, that her publicist needed to sit on her to get her to stop talking, such was the steady stream of BS coming out of Olivia’s mouth. As for the “Miss Flo” situation… while there were rumors that Olivia and Florence had a loud fight during DWD’s production, the bigger story (and the rumor which stuck around) was that Florence had huge issues with Olivia’s unprofessional behavior, and that Florence went to the studio to complain (and the studio took Florence’s side). Florence came out of that mess completely unscathed, and she probably won a lot of new fans for how she handled herself. All of which to say, I’m not really buying Olivia’s comments now.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red. Cover courtesy of The Cut.
