A fisheye lens, a film festival, and ten million views later, Olivia Wilde can now tell the story and laugh about it. The 42-year-old actress and director appeared in May on the red carpet at the San Francisco International Film Festival and, without knowing it, starred in the meme of the year: the video showed her looking so gaunt that people started comparing her to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Some went even further — strangers on the internet “diagnosed her” with illnesses, Megyn Kelly did an entire segment about how dead she looked, and her own little brother, Charlie Cockburn, sent her a video asking: “Olivia Wilde, would you like to address the recent rumors that you are a resurrected corpse?” 💀
This week, on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Wilde held nothing back. “I really looked like a corpse! Are you too young for Tales from the Crypt? There was a dead man in a sarcophagus in there… I looked like that”, she said through laughter. She explained that the fisheye lens was to blame — “I don’t know why it was so close, it had no reason to be” — but admitted it also wasn’t showing her at her best. 😂
What made her laugh the most was this: “We all have bad photos, but imagine them being on one hundred million phones”. And about her brother, who was the first to make the joke to her, she said bluntly: “It had to be your little brother who gave you the maximum amount of shit”. Siblinghood: always loyal, always ruthless. 🫶