Olivia Wilde recently appeared on “The Louis Theroux Podcast” and slammed Elon Musk while also speaking out against misogynistic incel culture at large. “The Invite” director and star revealed she once toured Musk’s SpaceX headquarters and met the business tycoon long “before he turned into a creature.”
“I really resent him now. I really deeply resent him,” Wilde said. “I met him many, many years ago. I think SpaceX had just built their headquarters in L.A. and I got to go on a tour because I wanted to see the rocket ships. He was interested in donating money to an organization that I was a part of in Haiti that was building hospitals and schools. I believe he did donate a little bit of money, and that’s appreciated. I was confused by him. I would never have predicted he would go down the path he has gone down. He did seem really smart.”
Wilde noted how Musk has perpetuated some of incel culture’s more disturbing ideology, particularly the belief that men are more powerful than nature. The filmmaker noted how Musk connects to this mentality by “talking about how we don’t have enough people and the world is underpopulated and we could handle another billion people.” Musk often expresses his belief that humanity is facing an impending “underpopulation crisis,” arguing it’s a bigger threat than global warming.
During the press tour for “Don’t Worry Darling” in fall 2022, Wilde garnered the attention of incel culture when she said she based Chris Pine’s villain character off author and commentator Jordan Peterson, who Wilde referred to as “this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community.” Peterson then broke down in tears during an interview with Piers Morgan in reaction to Wilde’s statement.
Wilde defined incels at the time as “disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women. And they believe that society has now robbed them — that the idea of feminism is working against nature, and that we must be put back into the correct place.”
Speaking now on Theroux’s podcast, Wilde admitted that it “might have ben unfair for me to call [Peterson] a pseudo-intellectual” because “he obviously thinks about things deeply, but I just feel that he operates in a way that is a buttoned-up version of the type of thinkers that lead to the Andrew Tate’s of the world. There are different layers to that community, some of whom speak more clearly the points they are all actually filtering through.”
“My issue with Peterson is a lot of people who are not in any way misogynist have adopted this sanitized version of the same philosophy that’s rooted in deep misogyny and weaponized by the incel community,” Wilde continued. “The basic point of it is entitlement to power. That is something that many men are struggling with… I was disturbed by what I saw as this misogyny that was being weaponized and leading us to elect Donald Trump twice and beyond that just empower these groups of people who I think are dangerous.”
When asked in 2022 about why Wilde’s comment made him so emotional, Peterson fought back tears and said, “It’s really something to see — constantly how many people are dying for lack of an encouraging word and how easy it is to provide that if you’re careful.”
Wilde told Theroux she was more or less dumbfounded by this comment, explaining: “‘Lack of an encouraging word’ is so absurd. There is a large, booming word of encouragement happening at all time for these men, which is: ‘This world is yours and you are entitled to it.’ That’s deeply engrained in our society. This idea they need a reminder of encouragement deserve more is ludicrous.”
Listen to Wilde’s full interview on “The Louis Theroux Podcast” here.