Olivia Wilde has a Teflon exterior, thinks the media pits women against one another

This will shock you, but guess who’s still talking? Olivia Wilde. The only saving grace with Olivia Wilde’s Elle “Women In Hollywood” cover is that this interview seemed to be conducted after her messy AF interviews in Variety and Vanity Fair. The VF cover was so chaotic that the VF journalist had to rewrite the whole thing after Olivia got exposed as a chronic liar and drama queen in her Variety piece. So here we are – Olivia uses this Elle piece to again make Don’t Worry Darling sound like it’s some kind of feminist masterpiece while also being about women’s sexuality and it’s also about ten other things. I haven’t seen it, but I know DWD is none of that. Some highlights from Elle:

Wilde is disappointed that DWD has been “minimized into bite-size TikTok points.” “This film is trying to ask big questions, but [it’s] ‘Let’s just focus on this sideshow over here.’ Having been a known figure for a while…makes me well-equipped to have a Teflon exterior. But it also means that you’re under a different kind of microscope. It’s brought my attention to the media and how it pits women against one another.”

Her future projects: Meanwhile, Wilde is developing, and set to direct, a Kerri Strug biopic with the working title Perfect, and reportedly has a deal with Sony to direct a hush-hush, female-centric Marvel feature. “A few of the things I have in development are about the raw determination of women. Clearly, I idolize women who survive a system that they feel challenged by.”

The untruths about herself: “It is shocking to see so many untruths about yourself traded as fact. Florence had a really wise comment that we didn’t sign up for a reality show. And I love that she put it that way, because it’s as though the general public feels that if you are making something that you’re selling to the public, you somehow have accepted that your life will be torn to shreds by a pack of wolves. No, that’s actually not part of the job description. Never was.”

DWD’s feminist perspective: “I’m very curious about our collective complicity in [upholding] the patriarchy. I found myself seeing a lot of content that was struggling to address feminist issues and instead becoming either really simplified or overly didactic. I had no interest in making a feminist parable that was judgy or that defined men as bad and women as good. I was much more interested in that tense space where we recognize our own participation in the system that objectifies us.”

On Roe v. Wade being overturned: “We knew about the movement to overthrow Roe long before we started making the film. It’s something that’s ever-present. I have been very involved in the pro-choice movement, and it’s introduced me to probably the ugliest, most depressing element of our culture in terms of [certain pro-life advocates] who have made vicious, violent threats against me. I mean, no one else has threatened to throw acid on my face other than a ‘pro-life mom.’ We had a bunch of Trump quotes up on our board when we were writing the script, and there was this gross tendency of Trump’s to be very nostalgic about a better time. What these men are referring to is a time that was horrific for anyone who wasn’t a straight white cis man. It was interesting to recognize that I had spent my entire life lusting after the iconography of this time when I would’ve had very few rights.”

On DWD’s sex scenes: “It’s interesting because Florence very wisely pointed out that a lot of attention has been given to the sex scenes. And I think she’s so right. I completely agree with her that it’s overshadowing everything else that the movie’s about, which is so interestingly ironic because one of the uses of sex in Victory is as a tool of distraction. When Florence pointed that out that this film is so much bigger and better than just the sex scenes, I was so happy that she said that because I feel the same way.”

On receiving ageist hate on social media: “It’s so interesting for me when that comes from women because I’m like, ‘Do you plan on not getting older? Or if you already are older, do you feel that you don’t deserve the same opportunities in life?’ It’s so sad to me to look at that and realize people have such small expectations for their own lives and they are projecting those expectations onto me. And I reject your projections.”

[From Elle]

The crap about the sex scenes… one of Olivia’s “selling points” as she promoted DWD was that it was this sexy movie about female pleasure. SHE was the one hypersexualizing the story and trying to make it sound like it was some big, important treatise on sex from a female perspective. Florence Pugh, in her one interview to support the film, was simply like “please don’t focus on the sex scenes.” Now Olivia is like “yes, I totally agree!” Olivia is bonkers. As for Olivia’s future projects… I am genuinely interested to see if Olivia gets put in “director jail” and whether there are any short-term or long-term repercussions to DWD.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, cover courtesy of Elle.

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