Olivia Wilde is setting the record straight regarding her personal life and relationship with Harry Styles. As rumors continue to swirl that the Don’t Worry Darling director, 38 and leading actor, 28, began dating while she was in a relationship with Jason Sudeikis, Wilde sat down for a new interview with Vanity Fair to clear the air.
The Tron: Legacy actress explained that she did not indeed leave or cheat on Sudeikis (her partner of 9 years and father of her 2 children) for Styles. “The complete horses—t idea that I left Jason for Harry is completely inaccurate,” she told Vanity Fair. “Our relationship was over long before I met Harry. Like any relationship that ends, it didn’t end overnight.”
She went on, adding, "Unfortunately, Jason and I had a very bumpy road, and we officially dissolved the relationship towards the beginning of the pandemic. We were raising two kids during lockdown, so we co-parented through that time." She continued, "Once it became clear that cohabiting was no longer beneficial for the children, it became the responsible thing to not, because we could be better parents as friends who lived in different houses."
While Wilde and Sudeikis called it quits during the spring of 2020, according to her, news of their breakup wasn’t made public until November of that year. During that time, Wilde was filming and directing Don’t Worry Darling, which Styles starred in. Her relationship with the "As It Was" singer became public in January of 2021 when they attended a friend's wedding together and were photographed holding hands.
In a Variety profile piece last month, Wilde seemed to hint that the viral April incident (in which she was served with custody papers from Sudeikis while giving a speech onstage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas) is a prime example of why she “left” her relationship with him. “It was my workplace,” Wilde said without directly naming Sudeikis, “In any other workplace, it would be seen as an attack. It was really upsetting. It shouldn’t have been able to happen. There was a huge breach in security, which is really scary.”
She continued, deeming the moment a frightening and stressful one, “The hurdles that you had to jump through to get into that room with several badges, plus special COVID tests that had to be taken days in advance, which gave you wristbands that were necessary to gain access to the event — this was something that required forethought.”
In her latest interview with Vanity Fair, she expanded on how the incident made her feel. "I was also deeply saddened by it–and disturbed by it in a lot of ways,” she said. “I know it took an extraordinary amount of energy [for the server] to get in that room. It took a tremendous amount of forethought. And I will tell you, there are so many other ways to do that. I am not someone who lives in hiding. If that experience hadn’t been public, I never would have spoken of it, because I would never want my kids to know that happened. Unfortunately, they will know what happened.” The former couple share 2 children together; son Otis, 8, and daughter Daisy, 5.
