Actress Olivia Wilde ventured into directing her first feature film this year, the widely acclaimed teen comedy “Booksmart.” Wilde has already earned acclaim for her direction, picking up nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards, Gotham Awards and multiple critics groups.
Wilde recently sat down with Gold Derby senior editor Zach Laws to discuss what inspired her to take the plunge into directing, the progressive nature of “Booksmart” and tips she took from film’s most prominent auteurs. Watch the exclusive video chat above and read the complete transcript below.
Gold Derby: Olivia, this is a version of you that we haven’t seen before artistically. Was it frightening to make this leap behind the camera for this?
Olivia Wilde: I think appropriately frightening. Frightening enough to give me the adrenaline and the energy needed to get it done. I had been wanting to do this for a really long time and I had been preparing by directing some music videos, a short film and mostly recognizing that I was my happiest on-set as a director. It felt very right. I loved every element of the process from prep through post. I really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of it. While it was intimidating, I just had so much fun and I really felt lucky to be able to do it that that blasted away all my nerves.
GD: So when you read this script, why choose this as your debut?
OW: I had been looking for something in this realm because I wanted to have my first film be an homage of sorts to the films that made me wanna be in this business, the films that made me want to make movies. That is “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” That is “Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” These are movies that I watched over and over and over and I wanted to be close to them. As a young woman, that seemed to me to mean that I should act. That is what actors do. Women are given the example of your participation in movies is as an actress. I didn’t think, “Should I be a DP? Should I be a director? Should I be a production designer?” For me, it really brought me to acting in a way that I’m very grateful for. I do feel at this point that I was heading here all along. “Booksmart” came to me as a concept that was looking for a reinvention and I loved the idea of telling the story of two really smart women who loved each other deeply, who respected each other and who weren’t trying to assimilate but had to go on this journey to understand themselves. I knew that it was the story that I wanted to tell for personal reasons and because I felt that this generation deserved a story that reflected how kick-ass they are.
GD: Right, you mention reinvention and that’s what’s so fascinating and great about this movie. It’s got all the trappings of your typical teen comedy but it’s got so much heart in it as well. Talk about subverting those conventions. Was it difficult to tow that line?
OW: The great thing about the intelligence of filmgoers now is that there is a language. We have such a shorthand because of the amount of movies we’ve all grown up with at this point, that when it comes to something like a story about high school, you can skip several steps. You can have a trope that they will very quickly identify as one thing and then completely subvert it in a way that is ultimately satisfying because they very quickly connect the dots. That is fun to take advantage of. I really enjoyed presenting the concept of two girls in high school who are unpopular, knowing people would assume their quest would be to become popular and that everyone else must be cruel, and then, taking people on a journey that allows them to realize that’s not in fact what’s going on. Those feeling like outsiders are actually the ones excluding everyone else. I just thought this is fun because audiences are so smart and experienced in this realm that we can move at a very brisk pace and we can tell a lot of story in a short amount of time.
GD: Let me ask you, you’ve been an actress for a long time. You’ve worked with a lot of really great directors, people like Spike Jonze, Clint Eastwood coming up, all that time when you were on-set were you making mental notes about, “This is how I wanna work, this is how I don’t wanna work”?
OW: 100%. I was effectively shadowing everyone I worked for. That was my way of attending a de facto film school. For years I thought, “I can’t direct because I haven’t been to film school.” I was insecure about that lack of real education. I had studied acting, not filmmaking. Yet, I realized this is my chance to study the greats, shadow them, pay attention and ask 100,000 questions, which is what I’ve always done. I don’t like leaving set, I don’t go back to my trailer. I sit by the monitor, I watch and all of my bosses over the years were so patient and generous with their advice. Spike Jonze was the one who said, “Go direct some music videos, it’s the greatest way to cut your teeth.” You really learn about telling a story visually and efficiently. Mark Romanek also was a great mentor in that he came in and directed an episode of “Vinyl” when we were making that show and he also shoved me in that direction. I really appreciate the people who dared me to just go do it. I think for many directors, it’s hard to get over that hump of just going and making something. What if it’s not good enough? You just have to start making. So I learned valuable lessons from many of them and of course I learned valuable lessons from the people who weren’t great examples, who weren’t the best communicators and weren’t confident directors. So I thought, “Okay, cautionary tales everywhere.”
GD: Having been an actress for so long and observed all these things and being directed by people, what is your approach to directing Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever and all the other actors?
OW: I’m of the school that every actor should be communicated with differently based on their experience and their personality. They speak different languages, so when you are directing someone like Beanie who is trained in theater and she can truly do anything, but she speaks a very specific language in terms of her process, part of the fun of directing is switching your language over to that actor’s experience and saying, “This is how I think I can help you come to this place of understanding. I can get on the same page as you by speaking your language, which is different from that of Kaitlyn’s.” Victoria Ruesga was an actress who had actually never acted before in her life. She’s a pro skateboarder who was playing the role of Ryan in our film and I love the experience of directing non-actors. They’re just completely open and willing to evolve into this space without any hangups that get in their own way. For me what’s clear is that fearlessness is the most valuable attribute of any actor, and when people are incredibly experienced but guarded, that’s actually much more difficult. So I loved taking the lessons I learned as an actress myself. How do I like to be spoken to? What’s the most effective way a director can communicate with me to yield the best performance, turning that outward and empathizing deeply but not expecting them each to work the same way I do as an actor. That’s the fun. “I sense you’re a little different. You need a little more structure. You need to be set free. You need to be left alone.” I think that’s part of the fun.
GD: I guess it helps having acted with so many different people as well. You get that kind of, “This is how this person works.”
OW: Yes, completely, and knowing that by asking them to really work very hard very quickly, we had 26 days, we did sometimes seven pages a day, it was very useful that I worked on television for many years, so I count that as really important training for this. I don’t understand the concept of sitting down on-set. When you are setting up for one shot, you’re rehearsing the next. So I cut my teeth in a high-stakes, very fast-paced world and that prepared me but it also allowed me to empathize with the actors who are being given tremendous amount of dialogue, some of it in Mandarin. I stole a rule from Scorsese, who has a no sides on-set rule and I implemented that mostly because we just didn’t have time for anyone to not be off-book. But these actors didn’t even flinch. “Great, cool, off-book, no problem.” Maybe privately they were freaking out but I think by raising the standards and daring people to do something difficult, it actually inspires them to be better and to have more fun.
GD: How do you keep your cool in situations where you’ve got 26 days and it’s your first feature film and you’ve got all this complicated stuff going into it?
OW: I just knew what was possible. I felt very confident that we could pull it off. I felt we had assembled an incredible team. I had an extraordinary AD named Scott Robertson who worked with [Alejandro G.] Iñárritu. He did “The Revenant.” In fact, any time things were slightly stressful I’d be like, “But it’s not ‘The Revenant.’”
GD: You don’t have to worry about a bear.
OW: There’s no bear, and it’s very warm! But I think half the battle, putting together this incredible team, I had an extraordinary DP, Jason McCormick, who really embraced the idea of elevating what people expect from teen comedies and trying something more stylistic and a little bit more bold than people expected from me, certainly. I thought, “I really wanna go for it. I may only have one chance at this.”
GD: I saw the music video influence in that, the way the pacing goes and the visual style.
OW: Yeah, and I enjoyed that. A lot of my filmmakers from Paul Thomas Anderson to [Quentin] Tarantino really embrace an energy in their filmmaking that it is a driving, musical force that is what I like to watch and definitely what I like to make.
GD: You mentioned how this is reflective of this generation and one of the most revolutionary things in it is that you have a character who is a member of the LGBTQ community and the movie is not centered on the fact that she’s a lesbian. It’s a part of her character.
OW: Yeah, exactly. I wanted to try to have a conversation that took place after the stage of coming out. What is the step after that? There are so many valuable, wonderful stories out there about the coming out process or coming to terms with one’s own sexuality and how that affects their relationships. I thought, “What’s the stage after that?” What’s the goal is that it’s a non-issue in many ways. I really enjoyed being able to portray a friendship between two characters, one queer, one straight, that that’s not an issue within the relationship at all. It’s merely one element of their personalities. This is who she likes, this is who she likes. It’s not something we needed to focus on in a way that I think you’d be primed to expect. I often find that young people, this Generation Z, they think in a way that rejects the paradigm. They don’t want labels. We are dinosaurs who expect everyone to pick a lane. I believe that the future is no lanes. It is just a little bit more evolved and I wanted the film to inch closer to that place.
GD: Yeah, you deal with young love and heartbreak and all those things in very tender ways.
OW: Yeah, that is universal. I wanted to tap into our shared adolescent trauma that exists because of the high-stakes experience of young love and self-discovery, but not to assign it to any specific sexuality. It was just about what happens when you discover yourself and your own gut instincts that drive you toward someone or away from someone. That’s universal and that’s what makes it relatable to people who are not teenage girls, which was the goal. I didn’t wanna make a movie just for teenage girls. I wanted to make a movie all of us could relate to, because everyone has felt like an outsider. Everyone has failed to see others and that’s the important part of this.
GD: Before I let you go, you’ve got your first movie directed, what are you working on next and is there a story you’re just dying to tell?
OW: Luckily those two things are coinciding right now, which is amazing. My goal with making my first film is that I would have a chance to make another one. Always, let me keep going. This next one is called “Don’t Worry, Darling” and it’s a thriller. I love thrillers. This one has a “Rosemary’s Baby” vibe to it, if we’re doing our job right. It’s one that I’ll also be acting in, which is totally terrifying, but the next leap of faith I’m ready to take and I think it is the story that above all others, the one that I’m really itching to tell right now. It’s very timely and it’s personal and I’m excited that I get to do it.
GD: Well I certainly look forward to seeing that. Olivia Wilde, thank you so much for your time.
OW: Thank you for having me.
