There is, as there always is, video of the whole thing.
Wilde has long been a troll magnet on social media because of her politics. But in the past two years, she has received particularly vicious comments, and they’ve shaken her. And “I’m f*cking tough,” she says. “Like, the whole world saw me get served [custody] papers.” She continues: “I’ve had women judging me for separating from Jason. There are people who feel entitled to hurl horrendous insults at me and my family. Telling me I’m a terrible mother. Threatening me and my kids or saying I should lose my children.” She says people mistakenly assume that when she is photographed with Styles, she is neglecting her kids—but Sudeikis has equal custody. “When they are with their father, I trust him to be a great parent. So when they’re not with me, I continue to live my life. But the judgment I’ve seen from people for living my life…”
In February 2021, the talk show host Wendy Williams, extrapolating wildly from paparazzi photos, launched into a monologue about Wilde on air. “You don’t throw away your kids and your fiancé,” she told her studio audience, then turned to the camera and upbraided Wilde directly: “When your children grow up, Olivia, you’re going to look like the worst mother who ever done it.”
Says Wilde, “It broke my heart, not because I care deeply about the opinion of Wendy Williams, but the applause from the audience made me sick. I was like, ‘Why are these women finding pleasure in this moment? Is it because it somehow makes them feel better about their lives, judgments, and choices without ever wondering why I might have made those choices?’ ”
For the sake of her children, Wilde models Michelle Obama’s exhortation, “When they go low, we go high.” “I just remember that nobody knows my private life except my very small, trusted circle,” she says. “And my self-worth can in no way be connected to perception, because that’s just a losing battle.”
I tell Wilde that I’m still stuck on the fact that she went from the fantasy high of getting Mirren’s blessing to being publicly served custody papers within a span of minutes.
“So twisted, right?” she says. “My favorite Carrie Fisher quote is, ‘If my life weren’t funny, it would just be true, and that’s unacceptable.’ ” She steers the conversation back into upbeat territory. “Helen Mirren,” she says. “Now I can’t stop thinking about her. Maybe Helen’s the reason I got through it.”
Wilde is careful about what she says about her relationship with Styles. “I think once you crack open the window,” as she puts it, “you can’t then be mad when mosquitoes come in. It’s like, ‘You opened the window.’ ” Still, his effect on her life is clear between the lines of what she does say.
She tells me about watching him play a 21,000-person arena. Standing next to her was Jenny Lewis, the indie rock icon who had opened the show. “We were looking around, and she said, ‘That’s a lot of happy women,’ ” Wilde remembers, noting that, of course, there were many men in the arena too. “I instantly started crying. Where else do we see this? Happy women? Women brought together with joy, loving each other, and cheering for each other? This has been like a gift to be amongst this.”
Wilde makes a point of saying that Styles’s fans have welcomed her with open arms: “His fans are a beautiful and loving group of people. I have had the opportunity to witness some of the most moving examples of compassion and acceptance. Standing in a room with 20,000 happy women, that’s….” She fishes for the appropriate words but can’t find them.
Would Wilde consider marrying again? The short answer is yes. She’s always looked to her parents as a model for a healthy partnership: “It’s incredibly supportive and they’ve evolved, individually and as a couple, through so many unexpected twists and turns. They’re best friends. And I think that’s what marriage really is. It’s a commitment to a best friendship. And a partnership. I think now I really understand what that means.”
Wilde stands by advice that she got from a mall Santa Claus about a decade ago. She and her friend had gotten in line at the Grove in L.A. as a joke, but Santa actually blew their minds with his sage wisdom: “Santa said, ‘Fill up your own love cup. Let someone fall in love with your overflow.’ Even though it comes from this ludicrous source, I have told so many people, ‘You’ve just got to fill up your own love cup.’ Thousands of dollars of therapy did not give us what five minutes of mall Santa did.”
In the weeks after I saw Wilde in London, of course, the internet began feasting on Don’t Worry Darling. By the time the movie premiered in Venice, the nickname “Miss Flo” had trended on Twitter, and seemed to have exacerbated whatever frustrations Pugh had on set. The press conference in Venice—which Pugh skipped, claiming scheduling problems—was like a bad day in the White House pressroom. Wilde made clear she was there to talk about what was on the screen, not gossip, saying, “The internet feeds itself.” Chris Pine appeared zoned out to a lot of people on social media and immediately became a meme. Ultimately, a festival official ended the conference with many hands still in the air.
After the press conference, Pugh’s stylist posted a video of her strolling breezily through the festival, Aperol spritz in hand, and she was applauded in some quarters as an icon of “quiet quitting.” At the premiere—where to begin?—the director and her leading lady were seated three cast members apart, which inspired cracks like this on Twitter: “Whoever made this seating arrangement has planned a wedding with divorced parents.” A video of Styles taking his seat was examined with Zapruder-like intensity to ascertain whether he had spit on Chris Pine. (He had not.) Even when the film got a seven-minute standing ovation, observers were quick to point out that Pugh and Wilde didn’t seem to make eye contact during it.
In an email after Venice—when they go low, we go high—Wilde tells me, “Venice was a whirlwind—from the minute I got into the first boat and was zooming through the canals, to the first glance of the Grand Canal and St. Mark’s Basilica to seeing the billboard for DWD towering over the Lido—it was a fantasy coming true. To stand together with our cast, and finally show the film to an audience of film lovers, was so moving! Watching Arianne [Phillips] win her Passion for Film award was incredibly emotional. I felt so proud of her, of Katie Byron our production designer, who was there with us, as well as Matty Libatique, our genius DP. This film family went through a lot together, and it was extremely meaningful to celebrate together that night.”
