Olivia Wilde: The Invite

What this episode covers

Olivia Wilde. Actor. Director. Producer. Olivia comes from a long line of journalists, a British father and an American mother, who have made groundbreaking investigative documentaries. The late writer Christopher Hitchens, a friend of the family, was her babysitter. She grew up in a world of words, a world of stories, a world of speaking truth to power. She chose her stage name in honor of Oscar Wilde, a writer she admires. Olivia starred in dozens of TV shows and movies before directing her first feature in 2019, the raunchy, high-stakes, hilarious, high school comedy, Booksmart. Her latest movie, The Invite, is a tight ensemble film, which she both directs and acts in alongside Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton and Seth Rogen. The Invite was a smash hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January — the last one in Park City, Utah — and set off one of those legendary bidding wars you hear about like Sex, Lies, and Videotape did back in the day. In April The Invite opened the San Francisco Film Festival at the newly renovated historic Castro Theatre and Olivia came to see us in the studios of KQED just before the screening to talk about the movie and her path as a filmmaker.

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