Cast your mind back to the winter of 2022 and, for many people online, supporting Olivia Wilde had become a shorthand for professing your feminism.
Why? Because the discourse surrounding Wilde seemed to touch a cultural nerve. What began as celebrity gossip soon felt like a proxy war over female autonomy: who is permitted to desire, to move on, to be imperfect, and whether motherhood should mark the end of those freedoms.
On the latest episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper touched on exactly that dynamic.
“When you do go through a separation and then you are dating someone who is younger, I think there is an expectation, especially as a mother, that when you go through that public separation with kids involved, you are supposed to be self-sacrificing and sexless,” Cooper said.
Few people understand that better than Olivia Wilde.
As she prepares to return to the spotlight with her latest directorial effort, The Invite, the filmmaker is also reflecting on the controversies that overshadowed her last film, Don’t Worry Darling, and her relationship with Harry Styles.
For the uninitiated, by the time Don’t Worry Darling had reached cinemas, the film was almost secondary to the drama surrounding it. What began with Wilde being served custody papers from Jason Sudeikis while presenting the first footage from the film at CinemaCon soon spiralled into rumours of a major feud with Florence Pugh and intense scrutiny of her relationship with Styles.
When the cast finally arrived at the Venice Film Festival premiere, a viral theory that Styles had spat on Chris Pine felt like the final absurd chapter in a saga that had already taken on a life of its own.
Speaking to Cooper, Wilde addressed several of the headlines that dominated that era.
Looking back on her romance with Styles, which began during the making of Don’t Worry Darling, Wilde admitted she’s still unsure why their relationship provoked such a strong reaction.
Asked by Cooper what was so “triggering” about Styles dating an older woman who was also his director, Wilde said she believes much of the criticism reflected broader attitudes towards women rather than anything specific to their relationship.
“I don’t know how much I understand it yet,” Wilde said.
She also pointed to the intense parasocial relationships many fans develop with celebrities, describing it as a burden Styles has handled with remarkable grace.
“I think it also had a lot to do with the kind of parasocial relationship people have with him, which is a burden that is very weighty and not something I envy,” she said. “And he carries it with grace.”
Despite the relentless speculation surrounding the film’s production, Wilde insisted her relationship with Styles was far removed from the drama that played out online.
“We had the loveliest relationship. Like so, so sweet and so beautiful, and really, actually very domestic and kind and lovely,” she said. “I think that we existed in this little bubble, and the judgment never really got into that bubble, which was a miracle.”
Still, she acknowledged the frustration that their relationship seemed to elicit from the public.
“I would go to his shows and dance, and people were like, ‘Oh, how could she?’ … How dare you dance and smile.”
Wilde also spoke about one of the most widely publicised moments of the Don’t Worry Darling press tour: being served custody papers relating to her children with ex-partner Jason Sudeikis while presenting at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
“It was incredibly traumatising,” she said, describing the experience as one of the most difficult moments of the entire promotional campaign.
“I got through it because, weirdly, as women we’re taught to muscle through the most insane experiences,” she said, recalling how she finished her presentation before breaking down backstage.
Although the incident quickly became international news, Wilde said she does not believe Sudeikis intentionally orchestrated the public delivery of the documents.
“Jason has told me that he did not know, and I have to believe that in order to continue,” she said. “Lawyers can be super fucked up and do fucked-up things.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Wilde reflected on the scrutiny she faced as both a mother and a woman in a public relationship. Drawing on conversations with psychotherapist Esther Perel, who consulted on The Invite, Wilde suggested that mothers are often expected to give up parts of their identity once they have children.
“In this country, motherhood means, ‘No more sexual being for you, young lady. That part of you is over now,'” she said.
Wilde argued that there remains a lingering expectation that mothers should no longer pursue desire, romance or pleasure for themselves, and believes that attitude contributed to the scrutiny she faced throughout her relationship with Styles.
She also pointed to what she sees as a clear double standard, nothing that while her relationship with the younger Styles became the subject of intense public fascination, her former partner Jason Sudeikis was also dating a younger woman at the time.
“I think Jason was dating, I think even younger [than the age gap between myself and Harry],” Wilde said. Yet his relationship attracted nowhere near the same level of public attention or negativity.
What emerges most clearly from the conversation is the extent to which the discourse surrounding Wilde became a vessel for broader anxieties about women, motherhood and who society believes is allowed to pursue happiness after a breakup.
Because whether you liked Wilde, disliked her, or had no opinion on her at all, it’s difficult to ignore the double standard she describes. Men emerge from high-profile separations and begin dating again all the time. Rarely are they expected to become self-sacrificing, sexless versions of themselves in the process.
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