Olivia Wilde Delivers Fighting Words to the Haters, Hours After Nanny Interview

On Monday, Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis’ swirling breakup drama got a little more complicated when their former nanny entered the chat. The nanny alleged that Sudeikis once laid in front of Wilde’s car to stop her from leaving after he threw a fit because Wilde made her “special salad dressing” for Harry Styles. She also claimed that Sudeikis fired her in a drunken rage and that the former couple never paid her severance. Hours later, Wilde was all dressed up, facing an audience of her peers and the press, giving a speech onstage at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event.

In response to the nanny’s allegations, Sudeikis and Wilde characterized the interview in a joint statement to Jezebel as an “unfortunate apex” of a “now 18-month-long campaign of harassing us, as well as loved ones, close friends and colleagues,” calling the allegations “false and scurrilous.” This statement is a celebrity gossip goldmine because 1) it contains the perfect usage of the word “scurrilous” and 2) it made headlines just as Wilde was readying to deliver her speech. And while Wilde has been relatively demure about the collapse of her marriage, her relationship with a former boy band star, and the rumored smackdown between her and Florence “Miss Flo” Pugh, the actor and director spared not a single fighting word as she took the stage to give her honoree speech through “hellfire.”

“Let’s face it, it’s not always easy to keep going,” Wilde said. “In fact, sometimes it’s tempting to excuse ourselves from the burning hellfire of the misogyny that defines this business and say, ‘Good night, good luck, I’d rather eat glass for a living.’”

But not Wilde! Wilde clarified she does not want to eat glass for a living. Rather, she says she still feels “energized” and “motivated to keep fighting through” the media shitstorm that’s encircled her film Don’t Worry Darling, starring Styles and Pugh. “Let’s face it: You are not a woman in Hollywood until you’ve begged to be placed into a medically induced coma until your press tour is finished,” Wilde joked of the matter. “Until then, you are just a woman residing in or around the Hollywood area.”

Throughout the speech, Wilde touched on a number of elements that have rained on her parade this year, noting (jokingly? maybe?) that she would never have gotten into acting, producing, or directing if she knew “Twitter would be invented.” But most of the thinly veiled outrage seemed directed at the outsized negative persona the public and gossip blogs have assigned her. She was first chastised for dating a younger man—an event mostly unproblematic, despite obvious questions of power dynamics and workplace conduct at play. But as the press tour progressed, as did her relationship with Styles, the public began picking apart every plothole, cast dynamic, and relationship timeline, if only due to her sudden dominant presence in the tabloids.

“It often takes the form of a tight grip of your shoulders and an intense stare into your eyes and a defiant, ‘Do not let them fuck with you,’” she said, adding that fellow honorees Anne Hathaway, Michelle Yeoh, Issa Rae, Sydney Sweeney, Sigourney Weaver, and Ariana DeBose need to “remind the world” that they “aren’t so easily manipulated.” “No matter how much the patriarchy relies on us to cut each other down in order to weaken our collective power, we have to resist the urge to play by their self-serving rules.”

If any of this was directed at Pugh, well, I highly doubt Flo is even engaged in this media cycle anymore. It seems more likely Wilde’s rage is directed at those who’ve made her children’s lives, her personal life, and the intimate details of her romantic relationships everybody’s business. Whatever the truth behind her new beau, her feud with Flo, or the nanny’s allegations, one thing’s absolutely clear: Wilde has run out of fucks to give.