Olivia Wilde has confessed she and Jason Sudeikis ‘became strangers’ as she opened up about the breakdown of their relationship.
Appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday, Olivia, 42, recalled the moment they realised they didn’t know each other anymore and they knew it was over.
Speaking ahead of her new film The Invite, which explores a couple having troubles in their marriage, she told host Alex Cooper: ‘It’s no surprise to me that I ended up making a movie about relationships and the complexity of determining whether a relationship is over because it is not an overnight process.
‘It’s very difficult and the idea that relationships can come to a place where you become strangers.’
Reflecting on the moment she knew her and Jason were over, she said: ‘Like I mean I always I remember the date because it was my birthday, but this is March 2020, March 10th.
‘And Jason and I had been having a rough time of it for a while. Like we had we had a real bumpy bumpy ride. And we were driving home from my birthday party and I said, “Did you give me a birthday present?”
Olivia Wilde has said she and Jason Sudeikis ‘became strangers’ as she recalled the moment she realised their relationship was over on her birthday on the recent episode of Call Her Daddy(pictured together in 2019)
‘And he said, “What would I get you, Olivia? I don’t know you.” And he wasn’t wrong. We didn’t know each other anymore.’
Olivia continued: ‘This is the thing that made me want to make this movie because you can get to a place in a relationship where you stop engaging in the knowing of each other, in the curiosity about each other and you find yourself in a place where you’re like, “I don’t even know you.”
‘And that was the point when we realised it was over and it was f****g tough and it brought us to the place of like, “okay this is done. We’re going to end this.” And then literally two days later was lockdown.’
‘I’m sure there were a lot of couples… it would be really funny to have a convention of like everybody who broke up the day before lockdown and then had to live and be like we are now co-parenting in the same house and obviously trying to make it work, and trying to put it back together because you want to always put it back together for your kids until you realise this isn’t helping anybody.’
She added: ‘I think there’s so many couples who are bickering in a way that becomes kind of a little comedy act. But there’s contempt underneath. And we all know contempt is the end.
‘And it is this kind of poking and scraping, but you can go a long time with that. And it takes somebody stopping engaging in that to have the real conversation.’
Olivia and Jason were together from 2011 until they publicly announced their split in November 2020.
They got engaged in 2013 and share two children, Otis, 12, and Daisy, nine.
Olivia and Jason were together from 2011 until they publicly announced their split in November 2020, as Olivia admitted: ‘We didn’t know each other anymore’
Olivia was infamously served legal papers from Jason as she spoke on stage about her new movie at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April 2022.
The awkward moment incited what would become a bitter public feud between the couple whose split and co-parenting arrangement appeared to have been amicable up until that point.
After their split she went on to date Harry Styles from late 2020 to November 2022.
Speaking about their relationship for the first time, she told Alex: ‘It really did upset people! People were f***ing p***ed!
‘We had the loveliest relationship! Like, so sweet and so beautiful and domestic. I think that we existed in this little bubble and the judgment never really got into that bubble, which was a miracle and a real testament to us making that happen.
‘There was all this public madness but my private life was very far from it and very actually kind of wholesome and sweet.
‘I had real joy and love and happiness during that time. It was like the tornado was right outside the door and if you were inside, you were like, it’s so nice and then you’d open the door and a cow and a tractor would fly by.’
The director also spoke about the ‘impossible burden’ Harry has to carry as an adored superstar.
She said: ‘It had a lot to do with the kind of parasocial relationship people have with him which is a burden that is very weighty – and not something I envy.’
A parasocial relationship is a one-sided psychological bond where an individual feels a sense of intimacy, friendship or familiarity with a celebrity.
She continued: ‘He carries it with grace. I think that is an enormous, enormous responsibility that all those stars have to carry and it’s impossible.
Olivia and Harry dated for nearly two year before breaking up in November 2022; pictured in London in March 2022
‘It’s almost like the happiness made them [the fans] mad. I would go to his shows and dance – and people were like, “Oh, oh good. You slut. “How dare you dance and smile?”‘
Harry and Olivia connected on the set of the film Don’t Worry Darling in September 2020, in which Harry starred alongside love interest Florence Pugh.
The movie sees a husband [Styles] leaves home every day to work in a top secret facility, while a young 1950s housewife, [Pugh] begins to question her life when she notices strange behaviour from the other wives in the neighborhood.
Olivia directed the movie which was released in 2022 and said her decision to go quiet since then was totally intentional.
She said: ‘I felt like I needed to get quiet and needed to hear myself again and process all the pain and the lessons that I could find with it.
‘My own attempt to be strong and to rise above it came across as inauthentic because people were like “you must be hurting, why are you pretending to not be hurting?” [because of the split]… I’m a different person than I was three years ago.’
Olivia and Harry’s amicable split was thought to be down to the pressures of his global touring and Wilde’s focus on her children in Los Angeles.
