Unpacking the latest Olivia Wilde drama leads to one clear conclusion — we know too much

Attempting to distil the seemingly endless and multilayered madness currently surrounding Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis is no mean feat, but we’re going to take you on a whistlestop tour of the story so far.

As we’ve already discussed at length, the response to Don’t Worry Darling has been (wait for it) very worrying indeed. From the behind-the-scenes feud rumours to the carnage that was the DWD press tour, we’ve seen more coverage of #spitgate than actual movie reviews.

At the centre of it all is actor and director Olivia Wilde, a woman whose name has been thoroughly dragged by the ultra-online and Harry Styles fans alike. Back in January of last year — just a couple of months after Styles was confirmed to be replacing Shia LaBeouf as the male lead — Wilde and Styles were photographed holding hands at a wedding in California and it soon emerged that they had been dating for some time.

Being the new love interest of an ex-boy band member so beloved by a certain subsection of the internet that they feel a sense of ownership over him was never going to be easy, but then whispers began growing momentum surrounding the timeline of their relationship and whether Wilde had, in fact, cheated on her then fiancé, Jason Sudeikis.

“why does anyone even care about celebrity gossip?”

I just read a headline that said jason sudeikis laid down in front of Olivia wilde’s car to stop her from bringing Harry styles a salad with special dressing. I’m just supposed to scroll past that and go on about my day???

— sarah ? (@sarahthetaurus) October 17, 2022

Though a source has told People that the split was amicable and that they had transitioned into a great co-parenting routine with their two children, aged five and eight, things got a little murky when Sudeikis served Wilde a manilla envelope with legal documents regarding their children while onstage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

Clearing things up — though really, did she even have to — Wilde told Vanity Fair that the idea that she left Jason for Harry is, to use her words, “complete horseshit.”

“Our relationship was over long before I met Harry. Like any relationship that ends, it doesn’t end overnight. 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.”

ok so Olivia Wilde made a special salad for Harry Styles which upset her then husband Jason Sudeikis who was married to Kay Cannon who wrote and directed Cinderella which starred James Corden who was recently banned from Balthazar by restauranteur Keith McNally pic.twitter.com/qoLJctACN7

— Chris Murphy (@christress) October 18, 2022

You would assume that this would mean that the whole messy incident has been put to bed and we can all move on with our lives, but you would be very, very wrong.

Enter the latest antagonist in Olivia Wilde’s life: an unnamed former nanny. Talking to the Daily Mail in a since-deleted interview, the ex-nanny detailed multiple scandalous allegations that have since been deemed “false and scurrilous” in a joint statement from Wilde and Sudeikis. Yet naturally, that hasn’t stopped the internet’s fascination.

The allegations range from screenshots of alleged texts between the nanny and the former couple and that she was let go with no severance pay, to the bold claim that Jason lay under Olivia’s car so that she ‘wouldn’t leave’ because he didn’t want her to bring a salad with a ‘special dressing’ to Harry. She also said that the DWD director gave away her dog to spend more time with Styles. The brain, quite literally, boggles.

?olivia wilde gave us her salad dressing recipe which is from nora ephron? pic.twitter.com/LYxracNCC7

— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) October 19, 2022

In their joint statement responding to the allegations, Wilde and Sudeikis wrote: “As parents, it is incredibly upsetting to learn that a former nanny of our two young children would choose to make such false and scurrilous accusations about us publicly. Her now 18-month long campaign of harassing us, as well as loved ones, close friends, and colleagues, has reached its unfortunate apex. We will continue to focus on raising and protecting our children with the sincere hope that she will now choose to leave our family alone.”

Those waging the war on Wilde argue that the fact that she is the common thread between each of these scandals is entirely down to her own doing, and that as a master of her own narrative, she ought to be scrutinised accordingly. Wilde is a woman whose personal life has entirely eclipsed any semblance of professional merit in recent months and quite frankly, we need to shift our focus and reassess the standard to which we hold successful women.

Did she fall out with Florence Pugh? Was she distracted by her new relationship with co-star Styles while in the line of duty? Did she *really* give up her dog for a man? Does their age gap verge on inappropriate? Did she cheat on her fiancé? If so, when?

Would we ask even one of these questions if she were a man?