Olivia Wilde Thinks We Should Be Better About Watching Sex (Onscreen)

Brace yourselves, folks, as you’re about to officially find yourselves in the middle of Hot Olivia Summer™.

Director and actor Olivia Wilde stopped by the Rolling Stone Studio for a chat about not one but two movies she has coming out over the next month. The first, The Invite, is currently in select theaters and goes wide on July 10; it’s a remake of the 2020 Spanish movie The People Upstairs, which centers on two couples and a dinner party gone awry. Wilde directed the film and plays the party’s host, co-starring with Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz. The second, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex, finds Wilde playing a performance artist who begins a hot-and-heavy affair with her younger assistant, played by Cooper Hoffman. That film hits theaters on July 31.

Both films premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with The Invite sparking a major bidding war; it was eventually picked up by A24 for $12 million. Both deal with relationships, intimacy, and the healing power of great sex. And both movies suggest the filmmaker and star is having a moment, hence the “Hot Olivia Summer” tag. (Judges would have also accepted “Wilde Hot American Summer.”)

In our interview, Wilde discusses the origins of The Invite, assembling the star-studded cast (“It kind of feels like a Mad Libs,” she admits, regarding the film’s mix of acting styles), and the unusual rehearsal period that resulted in a good deal of the film being rewritten on the fly. Once the discussion pivoted to I Want Your Sex, she noted that both movies deal with the same types of subjects, only from vastly different angles — and that depicting sex onscreen still seems to make audiences a little uncomfortable.

“It’s funny, because look at, like, Heated Rivalry,” Wilde notes, bringing up the extremely steamy and extremely popular HBO Max series about two pro hockey players who hook up and fall in love. “We are in this age where people are much more open, at least in the streaming world. Maybe that’s because you’re at home? Maybe people are still afraid to take this out into public. Maybe there is a sense that this is something that, it’s all fine as long as it’s behind closed doors.

“But actually,” she continues, “the joy of sitting with people and sharing the shock and recognition of self is the fun of it. It is a bygone era, because you think of, like, Paul Mazursky’s [1969 movie] Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, and it was the perfect way to send up the world of enlightenment and therapy, and, like, EST, all these things. But it was also very relatable and bonding for people.
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“So I think that the idea of sexuality is not something people are uncomfortable with,” Wilde concludes, “but I think the idea of sharing those conversations in a public forum is something that we still feel a little bit like nervous about. But the nerves are what make it fun.”

To watch Olivia Wilde’s full Rolling Stone Studio interview, go to Rolling Stone’s YouTube channel, or just press play above.