'Booksmart' director Olivia Wilde says it's not hard to represent women in films so long as you're a little 'thoughtful'
The debate over the representation of previously ignored minorities in movies has been raging on for years now but actor-director Olivia Wilde ('House', 'Tron: Legacy') told MEA World Wide in an interview that she doesn't think it's actually that difficult to represent women on the silver screen. We caught up with Wilde while she was in attendance at the Hollywood Film Awards red carpet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on November 3 to promote her latest movie 'Booksmart', for which she won the Hollywood Breakthrough Director Award.
'Booksmart' is a coming-of-age comedy starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two high school girls who decide to finally break all the rules and party on their last day of class before they graduate and leave their childhood behind forever. It's the first time Wilde is getting into the director's chair for a full-length feature film and she spoke to us about the lessons she learned from the experience.
"It taught me that it's not hard to represent women in film," Wilde said. "It's just about the way you go through the process. You can hire in a way that is thoughtful, you can cast in a way that is thoughtful, you can write in a way that is thoughtful. It is not a difficult thing to make our films more representative. It's just a little bit of effort to change the way the paradigm has been set. So I felt excited to be an example of that. You know, it was a wonderful environment because it felt like we were modeling for the future that we want."
Clearly that thoughtfulness has paid off because 'Booksmart' has been hailed as one of the best coming-of-age movies of 2019, with a 97% critics' score and 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Wilde isn't done directing though and she's already got another film on the way. "I'm directing one in the spring called 'Don't Worry Darling', which is a thriller," Wilde revealed.