Olivia Wilde says a post-birthday conversation was all it took for her to know that her relationship with her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis was over for good. The actor and filmmaker dropped by the Call Her Daddy podcast this week to promote her new movie, The Invite. In the interview, she shared intimate details about a chat she and Sudeikis, with whom she shares two children, had prior to their split nearly six years ago.
“Jason and I had been having a rough time for a while,” Wilde recalled. “We had a real bumpy, bumpy ride, and we were driving home from my birthday party that my friends had had, and I said, ‘Did you get me a birthday present?’”
Sudeikis’ response, she said, was telling. “He said, ‘What would I get you, Olivia? I don’t know you.’ And he wasn’t wrong,” she explained. “We didn’t know each other anymore ... you can get to a place in a relationship where you stop engaging in the knowing of each other, in the curiosity of each other, and you find yourself in a place where you’re like, ‘I don’t even know you.’ And that was when we realized it was over.”
Breakup and Custody Battle
Sudeikis and Wilde split in 2020 after about nine years of dating. The former couple share two children. Their breakup drew heavy media scrutiny once Wilde began dating Harry Styles, whom she directed in Don’t Worry, Darling, for about two years shortly thereafter. She and Sudeikis also became embroiled in a high-profile custody battle amid the split, culminating in 2022 when she was served court papers on-stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
Describing the CinemaCon incident as “incredibly traumatizing,” Wilde said she’s still unsure whether or not Sudeikis was behind the stunt, clarifying that the Ted Lasso star “has told me that he did not know.”
“I know that, whether or not he knew it was going to happen, I know it really hurt him to see it happening to me,” she added. “It was undeniable that it was a fucked up thing and I know he felt very bad that it happened to me.”
Reflections on Harry Styles
Elsewhere in her Call Her Daddy chat, Wilde looked back fondly on her past romance with Styles, despite noting his fans were “fucking pissed” after their relationship was made public. “We had the loveliest relationship ... like so, so sweet and so beautiful,” she said. “I think that we existed in this little bubble, and the judgement never really got into that bubble, which was a miracle and a testament to us making that happen.”
Upcoming Film: The Invite
The Invite, which hits theaters June 26, is an English language remake of the 2020 Spanish film, The People Upstairs. Directed by Wilde, the comedy follows a San Francisco couple, Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde), whose marriage is tested when they host a dinner party for their enigmatic neighbors, Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton).
Watch Olivia Wilde’s Call Her Daddy chat here.
