Olivia Wilde: ’Stop trying to minimise us so you can control us’
After 15 years in the movie making business, Olivia Wilde is used to being underestimated and misunderstood. But the 35-year-old continues to defy expectations, making her her directorial debut with her new film Booksmart.
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After 15 years in the movie making business, Olivia Wilde is used to being underestimated and misunderstood.
In fact, the 35-year-old has likened Hollywood to the social dynamics of teenagers at school.
“High school is just a proxy for Hollywood, it is the exact same social dynamic,” Wilde tells Insider, chatting by phone from Los Angeles about her new film, Booksmart.
“It is the same struggle. I think that I have felt not only as a person in my real high school adolescent life but also within this industry. I have felt misunderstood, I have felt put in a box, I have felt like I had to prove that I could be more than one thing. I have made movies in every genre but it still is very hard to prove that you are multidimensional within this business.
“It is very convenient to categorise particularly women. It is convenient to say she is going to be an ingenue; she is a comedian; she is a serious actress, and it is unfortunate because human beings are complex and actors by their very nature are capable of being several different things.”
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Booksmart is not just any new film for Wilde — it is her directorial debut.
The comedy stars Beanie Feldstein as Molly, who, along with best friend, Amy, played by Kaitlyn Dever, embarks on a journey of self discovery determined to break the rules on the final days of high school.
Review site Rotten Tomatoes has the film pegged with a critics score of 97 per cent, which is a huge win by any measure.
“This movie does reflect some of my internal frustration at being misunderstood and Molly when she is on the hilltop in the scene towards the beginning of the film when she says, ‘We are not one dimensional’, I think that is me speaking through the film saying, ‘allow women to be complex, stop trying to minimise us so you can control us’,” says Wilde, who is married to fellow Hollywood star Jason Sudeikis.
“This is the type of movie that I love to watch and honestly this is the kind of movie that made me want to be in this business.”
Wilde — whose real name is Olivia Jane Cockburn — was inspired by John Hughes’ 80s films The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything.
“These are movies that made me excited to make movies and made me excited to be a young person,” Wilde says.
“They made the idea of youth seem so adventurous and kind of anarchistic and just punk rock in the ability to shrug off the idea of parents and grown-ups being involved and really allowing young people to take centre stage and grapple with the very high stakes complicated relationships and challenges that are very real to young people but are rarely reflected in films with the kind of authenticity and respect they deserve.”
Booksmart is funny though and Wilde uses those laughs to highlight deeper issues.
“It is almost like the Trojan Horse effect,” she says.
“I wanted to say something that I cared about within a movie that was really funny. That is what John Hughes did so well. If you think of Breakfast Club, when you think of it in passing you think of the dancing and the funnies and then you re-watch it and it is so poignant and so honest about the pain of being young and feeling misunderstood and feeling isolated and grappling with your relationships with your parents. That movie is heavy in so many ways but it hides that within something so fun and funny.”
With Booksmart, Wilde wants viewers to feel like “you are on a funny and fun adventure and walk out of it realising that you’ve learnt something, that you’ve ingested a message that we hope goes beyond just jokes. We hope people leave allowing themselves to see the complexity within other people and within ourselves”.
Overwhelmingly, the lesson in the film is you can be smart while also being fun and funny.
“You realise that as you get older I think,” she says.
“You realise you are a mess and you are together. I am smart and I also have fun. When we are young, we don’t allow for complexity in ourselves or our peers and there is an enormous amount of judgment between young people. If we make a movie that allows young people to realise you can be so many things at once, don’t put yourself in a box and don’t put your peers in a box either.”
Until now, Wilde has been known for starring in a string of big films like Tron: Legacy, Cowboys & AliensIn Time and Rush, as well as hit US TV series such as The O.C. and House.
Next up, she is attached to star in Clint Eastwood directed drama The Ballad Of Richard Jewell.
She is itching to continue her work behind the camera too.
“I definitely have the directors bug and because there are so few women directing films right now, particularly within the studio system, I want to be a part of that movement,” she says.
“I want to jump in and direct something else and reach out and help another woman direct her first film. This is an important time for women in Hollywood, of course women in the world, women in politics, everywhere in every industry, but in terms of this industry I have been blessed with an opportunity and I want to make sure that I lean in and help others do the same.
“Right now directing is what I really want to do. I am so inspired by it, I have caught the bug big time.”
* Booksmart opens nationally on Thursday July 11
Originally published as Olivia Wilde: ’Stop trying to minimise us so you can control us’
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