What Happened With Olivia Wilde at CinemaCon?

While CinemaCon has been a source of trailers, news, and more, it has also now become the talk of all sides of Twitter because of Olivia Wilde being served legal papers while on stage presenting her film Don’t Worry Darling during the Warner Bros. presentation. The film, which stars Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, and Chris Pine, was directed by Wilde and has attracted a lot of attention in part because it’s where Wilde met Styles, who she is currently dating.

As Wilde was talking about her movie, a mysterious manilla envelop was handed to her. “This is for me?” Wilde asked the individual who approached her with an envelope that said “Personal and Confidential” on it. “Is this a script?” she asked jokingly. And after opening it, Wilde continued to present the film without missing a beat, saying “Okay, got it. Thank you.” The following day, the news broke that the folder was filled with legal documents from Wilde’s ex-partner, Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis. Since then, it’s been a firestorm of people trying to know too much about Wilde and Sudeikis’ situation and what’s going on with the couple’s two children.

“Papers were drawn up to establish jurisdiction relating to the children of Ms. Wilde and Mr. Sudeikis,” a source for The Hollywood Reporter shared. “Mr. Sudeikis had no prior knowledge of the time or place that the envelope would have been delivered, as this would solely be up to the process service company involved, and he would never condone her being served in such an inappropriate manner.”

Security at CinemaCon

The conversation from CinemaCon itself seems to be that no one knows how or why anyone got that close to Wilde to serve her before being stopped. Even if, in theory, those serving her bought passes or had credentials, they’d have to get past security (presumably) to get on stage.

“To protect the integrity of our studio partners and the talent, we will re-evaluate our security protocols,” Mitch Neuhauser, managing director of the National Association of Theatre Owners and head of CinemaCon, told THR. He went on to make the point that “never in the history of the event” had there been something like this that happened to one of their star guests.

So the question remains how anyone got that close to Wilde, while on stage, without being stopped. We don’t know the inner workings of the documents, and it is frankly none of our (the public’s) business, but it is truly a cause for concern that there was no kind of security in place to stop someone from walking up to Wilde while she was presenting, no matter what the reason was.

Backstage is even one thing, but this is incredibly bizarre. It’s horrible for Wilde (and by extension Sudeikis, who has been drawn into the conversation despite having nothing to do with the timing or location), and hopefully it forces CinemaCon to really look at how their security is structured for future events.

(image: Greg Doherty/Getty Images)