Speaker
Olivia Wilde
Appearances over time
2 episodes
Episodes
2
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Olivia Wilde's parents both worked as war correspondents, flying on separate planes to Baghdad and staying in separate hotels before meeting in the middle of the night while on assignment.
Olivia Wilde eloped at Burning Man at 19 years old, with the actual paperwork signed back in LA — she says she immediately thought 'what the fuck did I just do?'
Olivia Wilde holds triple citizenship — British, Irish, and American — having grown up spending every school holiday in Ireland and feeling equally Irish and American as a child.
Olivia Wilde's only marriage lasted roughly 6-7 years, ending when she was about 25, making her a self-described '25-year-old divorcée.'
Wilde referenced the statistic that 50% of marriages fail, using the analogy that if 50% of planes crashed, nobody would keep flying.
Olivia Wilde's mother Leslie Cockburn was the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein's sons, gaining access by going to places other journalists wouldn't and once smuggling a camera under a burqa.
Leslie Cockburn was among the second class of women ever admitted to Yale University, studied anthropology, graduated early, and then lived in Kenya for a year before graduate school in London.
Wilde intentionally stepped back from public life and long-form interviews for roughly four years after the Don't Worry Darling promotional chaos, to heal and rebuild herself.
During a high-stakes CinemaCon presentation, Wilde was served legal papers on stage in front of studio executives and press, and forced herself to finish her speech before breaking down backstage.
Don't Worry Darling was made for $30 million but looks like a $100 million film, according to Olivia Wilde, crediting cinematographer Matti Loupetik and production designer Katie Byron.
Wilde cited the Barbie film's billion-dollar box office as proof that female-directed films are bankable, eliminating any studio argument against investing in women-led projects.
Olivia Wilde revealed that relationship therapist and author Esther Perel was her personal therapist for a period, and later became the official consultant on The Invite.
On the Cowboys and Aliens set, Olivia Wilde fell from a horse into a ditch ahead of 40 galloping horses; Walton Goggins turned his horse sideways in front of her, shielding her body and saving her life.
The Invite was shot chronologically on film with the cast workshopping the script throughout production — the creative team did not know the ending until one week before they filmed it.
Wilde said she read Esther Perel's book Mating in Captivity 20 years ago and it blew her mind, but she didn't truly understand it until going through enough relationships herself.
Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird made Booksmart possible. And Barbie's billion-dollar box office made it impossible for any studio to claim female-directed films aren't bankable. Wilde owes her directing career to women who went before her and kept blazing the path.
Olivia Wilde eloped at Burning Man at 19, had the paperwork signed by someone found on the internet, and was immediately asking herself 'what the fuck did I just do?' She then spent her early 20s living on a school bus in Venice before landing on The OC — and still considers the spontaneous marriage classic Olivia Wilde.
Half of all marriages fail — so why do people keep doing it? Wilde's analogy is brutal: nobody would board a plane with a 50% crash rate. But she's not anti-marriage; she's anti-entitlement, arguing that marriage fails when active loving becomes passive expectation.
When Wilde kissed Mischa Barton on The OC during sweeps week, it was treated as a massive cultural event — despite being the tamest kiss imaginable. She believes it mattered because queerness had never been assigned to the 'popular pretty girl' before, and young people still tell her it changed conversations with their parents.
Hollywood's perverse logic: for actresses, more experience means less value. For directors, the opposite is true. Wilde's pivot to directing wasn't just creative — it was a survival strategy, swapping a ticking clock for a career that compounds with age.
A terrible red carpet photo turned Wilde into a meme and prompted Megyn Kelly to do an entire segment declaring her dead. Her response: drink a bottle of wine with her brother, film his spit-take reaction, post it, and let the internet have the laugh they wanted anyway.
The harshest critics of women are often other women — and Wilde argues that's not a coincidence. Women have been handed the patriarchy's tools and are unconsciously using them to keep each other down, while the men are laughing. The origin of gossip was once a positive feminine superpower. It's been weaponized.
Jason Sudeikis was photographed on a beach in Costa Rica on Thanksgiving — the press loved it. Wilde knew that if she had been the one photographed away from the kids on a national holiday, she would have faced calls for her to lose custody. That asymmetry is the double standard made concrete.
On her birthday, March 10, 2020, Wilde asked Jason Sudeikis for a birthday present and he told her he didn't know her anymore. Two days later, COVID lockdown began, trapping them in the same house as they tried to figure out what came next. That conversation was the real end.
Wilde thought the Harry Styles/Chris Pine spitting video was a private absurdity. Then the world went insane. She kept reassuring herself each scandal was small and unnoticed — until Tom Cruise walked up at a party and told her unprompted: 'Fucked up, what happened to you in Vegas.' Nobody is unnoticed.
After watching Pamela Anderson's documentary, Wilde reached out and received one line of advice: 'The most rebellious thing you can do is stay soft. Don't let it harden you.' It reframed everything — staying vulnerable isn't weakness in the face of public cruelty, it's defiance.
Esther Perel wasn't just an inspiration for The Invite — she was Olivia Wilde's actual therapist years ago, then the film's official consultant. Penélope Cruz even based her character directly on Perel, letting audiences essentially spend the film hanging out with the world's most famous relationship therapist.
Wilde's mother was a war correspondent who traveled to Afghanistan while raising her children, facing relentless judgment for choosing dangerous journalism over constant presence. The lesson she passed to Olivia: the bullshit is inevitable, so don't get floored by it — just push through.
Being ranked #1 on the Maxim Hot 100 felt like validation for the girl who never fit in — and that was exactly the danger. Wilde spent years unraveling how she'd handed her self-worth over to a fickle, subjective machine that will inevitably flip to calling you the ugliest.
In front of the most powerful people in the film industry, Wilde was handed legal papers on stage mid-presentation. She finished her speech, dissolved backstage, convinced herself nobody saw — and then Tom Cruise brought it up months later. The lesson she took: surviving the unsurvivable makes you feel like you can handle anything.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Society & Culture 39%
- Health & Fitness 25%
- Arts 18%
- Kids & Family 7%
- TV & Film 7%
- News 4%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
