OLIVIA WILDE

‘YOU BETTER BE MAKING STUFF YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE, AND NOT JUST STUFF THAT FEELS EASY’

Though we’re talking in a luxe hotel room in Berlin in early August, where Olivia Wilde is “meeting friends” (a quick Google search reveals her boyfriend, Harry Styles, is playing in the city that night), the actor/ director isn’t a fan of comfort. It’s not, she says, what keeps one sharp. “The worst thing is to be comfortable,” she says when talking about her artistic output, hands waving expressively as she talks, her gold signet pinkie ring flashing in the afternoon sun. “If you’re comfortable, and you feel you’re leaning back on any sort of accomplishments, then you won’t be paying as close attention.”

Wilde has been paying close attention to the business end of moviemaking for years – ever since she came to attention as Alex on hit TV show The O.C., and through roles in House, Tron: Legacy, Cowboys & Aliens, Her and even her recent outing in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the 38-year-old has been watchful of directors (good and bad) to inform her move from on camera to behind it. That marinated knowledge was successfully parlayed into delightful high-school comedy Booksmart in 2019.

Ever the student, Wilde recalls her enthusiasm for every aspect of making the film, wanting to learn everything. “I remember showing up for six hours of ‘loop group’ recording, and the engineers were looking at me like: ‘A director has never sat in here for six hours to listen to people making stomping feet noises, and coughing in the back of a crowd.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I want to suck up every part of this process.’”

Having debuted her scrappy comedy at SXSW, now she and screenwriter Katie Silberman unveil their next ambitious collaboration at the Venice Film Festival with something diametrically different. A proud feminist and daughter of two journalists, Wilde has crafted twisty period thriller Don’t Worry Darling, which follows ’50s housewife Alice (Florence Pugh) living a perfect life with hubby Jack (Harry Styles). That existence shows cracks as Alice starts to question the status quo of a patriarchal society and what shadowy leader Frank (Chris Pine) is really trying to achieve…

To say any more is to risk spoilers, but Wilde, infectiously enthusiastic, sees dangerous parallels in her work and the eroding rights was a story about choosing joy,” she nods. “And this was a story about ignoring joy, and focusing on the more terrifying and difficult aspects of reality.” Some of that reality infects the promotional roll-out of the film a few weeks after we talk when Shia LaBeouf’s exit from the project becomes a he said/she said controversy and speculation runs rife of interpersonal issues between Wilde and Pugh.