THE HUG STILL looms large in her mind. That's partly because it was so unexpected, partly because it was a show of support and fellowship from another woman, and partly because the woman was Helen Mirren. As Olivia Wilde herself might say, holy fuck. "She held me and said, 'We're all very proud of you," Wilde tells me. "I was like, 'Does she think I'm someone else? She thinks I'm someone very impressive who's done something important."
It was this past April in Las Vegas. Wilde was at CinemaCon to unveil the first trailer for her sophomore movie as director, the rich, unnerving psychological thriller Don't Worry Darling with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles. She was about to go onstage at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace and make her pitch to the industry at large and movie theater owners in particular. She had never even met Mirren before, and here she was being embraced in solidarity by not just an Oscar winner but a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
I ask Wilde what she thinks Mirren meant. "I took it to mean, in this community, anyone who steps forward and says, 'I'll tell a story and I will get a film made that gives actresses opportunities to have great roles..." She doesn't finish the sentence, maybe out of modesty. "That's what I hope she's proud of." If Mirren had known what Wilde went through to make the movie-let alone the nasty surprise that awaited her when she walked on the stage moments later-she'd have hugged her even harder.
WE FIRST MEET at a pottery class in North London. I asked if we could start our interviews somewhere other than a restaurant, and Wilde gamely suggested this. She's running very slightly late, so she texts: "Julie! Hi it's Olivia! I'm on my way. Tube strike made getting a car a bit of a clusterfuck but I will be with you by 11:05. X."
This story is from the October 2022 edition of Vanity Fair US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2022 edition of Vanity Fair US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Both Now Sides - Selena Gomez is seriously in loveand making the best work of her career. With the audacious Emilia Pérez hitting theaters and Only Murders in the Building returning to TV, the actor, singer, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate talks, about the climb
Selena Gomez is seriously in loveand making the best work of her career. With the audacious Emilia Pérez hitting theaters and Only Murders in the Building returning to TV, the actor, singer, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate talks, about the climb
Give and Let Give -Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.
Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.
Party Planning - Putin wants Trump to win, of course, and he's got big ideas about a new world order. Think Yalta-on Fiji
I don’t know which moment in US history former president Donald Trump imagines when he says, “Make America great again.” He has never given a definitive answer in any speech or interview. But I know exactly which moment Vladimir Putin imagines in his own vision for Russian greatness. It is February 1945, when Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill divided the world in Crimea.
Boys and Their Toys - Inside the hypermacho, Bible-thumping alt-tech universe trying to take on Silicon Valley-from El Segundo
For more than two years, in the small, unassuming beach town of El Segundo, California, dozens of young men have gathered with a singular mission: to save America. They will do this, they say, by building the next generation of great tech companies. They call what they are building real shit—not like what the software engineers make up north, writing code on shiny MacBooks. Instead, these men have a taste for the tangible: They spend their workdays toiling in labs and manufacturing lines, their nights sleeping on couches and bunk beds. Some are making drones to try to control the weather. Others are building nuclear reactors and military weaponry designed to fight Russia and China.
Vanities - Maisy Stella knows how to think outside the box
Maisy Stella didn’t have a TV as a kid because her musician parents didn’t want her and her older sister, Lennon, tuning in and tuning out. So the girls used their imaginations. “My sister made a cardboardbox TV that I would get in, and she had a fake cardboard remote,” Stella says. “I’d do a baking show, and then she’d be like, ‘Soap opera!’ and I’d be like, ‘You killed my husband!’ We would do that for hours. That was our entertainment.” Only later, when the girls landed roles as Connie Britton’s children on the country music drama Nashville, did their mother and father relent. “We bought a TV the day that me and my sister got on TV.”
Another Country- Searching for James Baldwin in the South of France
Since James Baldwin's death nearly 40 years ago, the literary lion's final home, in the South of France, has drawn a procession of acolytes to the Provençal community of Saint-Paul de Vence, where he spent the last 17 years of his life.The 300-year-old villa in which he resided no longer exists: By 2019 developers had converted the site into a luxury apartment complex. But that hasn't deterred generations of admirers, inflamed and enlightened by Baldwin's prose, from making a pilgrimage. Including me. Seizing the occasion of the writer's centennial year, I paid a visit in April. My first stop was a table at a Baldwin hangout, the Café de la Place on Place du Général de Gaulle, for a croque monsieur and a double espresso.
A House Divided
The Mellon dynasty has long been known for its old money refinement and discretion. But when TIM MELLON became Donald Trump's biggest donor many members of the family were mystified-and not afraid to talk about it
FUNNY BUSINESS
NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LAUNCHED A REVOLUTION THAT CHANGED COMEDY, TELEVISION, AND THE MOVIES. NOW DIRECTOR JASON REITMAN HAS RE-CREATED THE CHAOTIC HOURS BEFORE SNL'S FIRST EPISODE. LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S 1975!
BAD FAITH
From exiled actors to academics, influencers to intellectuals, VF gets under the hood of the Catholic right's celebrity conversion industrial complex
THE GE NERAL
How ELIZABETH PRELOGAR, America's low-key, high-powered solicitor general, is holding the Supreme Court's feet to the fire
