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The actor Olivia Wilde spoke out about the response to her relationship with singer Harry Styles, which involved years of public shaming and criticism.
Olivia Wilde has enjoyed a highly successful career as both an actor and filmmaker. But, as is often the case for high-profile women, it is a celebrity relationship that many will know her for. From 2021 to 2022, after working together on Wilde’s second directorial project Don’t Worry Darling, the actor dated Harry Styles.
Thanks to Styles’ superstar status, the relationship dominated headlines and gossip columns from the get-go – but neither Wilde nor Styles have ever spoken about it publicly. That is until Wilde appeared on popular podcast ‘Call Her Daddy’ last week.
During the interview, Wilde did something she has largely avoided for years, speaking candidly about the relationship with Styles but, more importantly, the public’s response to it.
While she didn’t explicitly name him, Wilde reflected on the ‘public madness’ that engulfed her during the release of Don’t Worry Darling in 2022. She described a period in which tabloid speculation and online discourse transformed her private life into a global spectator sport. You can watch the episode below:
‘There was a public madness, but my private life was very far from it and actually kind of wholesome and sweet,’ she told Alex Cooper. Wilde went on to dissect the visceral backlash that followed her relationship with Styles, pointing out that such negative reactions to women dating high-profile men – but especially older women dating younger men – are nothing new.
‘We’ve been doing this to women for a long time,’ she said. ‘People were f***ing pissed.’
So pissed, in fact, that Wilde said she’s still struggling to reconcile the response to her lived experience. Age-gap relationships are hardly unusual, and while older men dating younger women has all but been normalised (here’s looking at you, Leonardo DiCaprio), instances of older women dating younger men are growing more common in the mainstream.
The dynamic was famously portrayed in a string of major movies including Babygirl and The Idea of You. However, when these kinds of relationships appear in real life, public response is still prickly.
Wilde’s comments cut to the heart of a conversation that extends far beyond her own experience with Styles. Four years after their relationship became front-page news, the reaction to it remains a revealing case study in how society continues to view women, older women, and women caught up with culturally beloved men.
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Age-gap relationships are often only normalised when they conform to familiar gender dynamics. Consider the enduring fascination with Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating history, where his much younger girlfriends have become a running joke rather than a source of moral outrage.
Or look at the runaway success of Rivals, where viewers have enthusiastically rooted for the romance between Rupert Campbell-Black and the much younger Taggie O’Hara. Such relationships may spark discussion, but they rarely provoke the same level of condemnation directed at women.
When the roles are reversed, older women are frequently portrayed as predatory, desperate, or manipulative. This double standard reveals a deeper discomfort with female desire itself. Society remains far more comfortable with men exercising romantic and sexual agency than women, particularly women over 35.
While men are routinely granted cultural permission to age, women are expected to become increasingly invisible. And what disrupts that tired old script like an older woman having the audacity to date or be desired by a younger man?
That discomfort was evident throughout Wilde’s relationship with Styles. Coverage rarely focused solely on the relationship itself and instead positioned Wilde as a lightning rod for criticism. She was accused of manipulating narratives, criticised for her appearance, blamed for perceived tensions surrounding Don’t Worry Darling and subjected to relentless online mockery.
Styles largely escaped the same levels of intense scrutiny. But that’s probably down to the fact that Styles has superseded the status of celebrity. He’s now one of the most beloved pop stars of his generation, commanding an extraordinarily passionate fanbase.
That fanbase begins to feel personally invested in a celebrity’s romantic choices, treating partners as obstacles, villains or threats rather than autonomous individuals with lives of their own.
