Olivia Wilde found it mortifying to be served with custody paperwork while onstage at CinemaCon.
“I will never forget one of the most f***ed-up things I went through, among so many, was that I was served papers on stage,” Wilde, 42, recalled during the Wednesday, June 17, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “Obviously, it was incredibly traumatizing. There’s so many elements to that.”
Wilde was handed an envelope marked “personal and confidential” during a panel for her film Don’t Worry Darling at CinemaCon in April 2022. Us Weekly subsequently confirmed the envelope contained custody documents.
Wilde and Jason Sudeikis, who were together from 2011 to 2020, share son Otis, 12, and daughter Daisy, 9.
“I get through it because, weirdly, as women we’re taught to muscle through the most insane experiences,” Wilde told podcast host Alex Cooper, stressing that she can now laugh about the incident. “I was like, ‘Just finish your speech.’ [I] got through it, went backstage and completely dissolved into a puddle. But then, I thought no one saw it because there’s no phones allowed in this event.”
Instead, Wilde realized that coverage of the viral moment was already published via multiple news outlets.
“A couple months later, I had the chance [to meet] Tom Cruise, and he was like, ‘Hi, I’m Tom. F***ed up what happened to you in Vegas.’ I was like, ‘No!’” the actress recalled, adding she still doesn’t know whether the incident was orchestrated. “Jason has told me that he did not know, and I need to believe that to continue [our coparenting relationship].”
Wilde added, “I think that lawyers can be super f***ed up and do f***ed-up things. I’m aware of that, and all of that, but I think that people are never their best selves when they’re engaging in that kind of process. It was so f***ed up in so many ways. 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.”
A source told Us at the time that Sudeikis, 50, was unaware when Wilde would be served, which the I Want Your Sex star further acknowledged on the “Call Her Daddy” episode.
“I know he felt very bad that it happened to me,” Wilde stated. “It was a moment that I ended up doing a lot of therapy about. Still kind of do.”
Wilde also reflected on the “noise” surrounding her personal life at the time, including her relationship with now-ex Harry Styles. (The former couple, who worked together on Don’t Worry Darling, dated from 2021 to 2022.)
“It was very unfamiliar to me to be thrust into such chaos. It was not my vibe,” she admitted. “That was an unfamiliar thing for me. And I was suddenly in a tornado. … There was all this public madness, but my private life was very far from it and very … wholesome and sweet. I had a lot of real joy and love and happiness during that time.”
