Olivia Wilde responds after being accused of 'abandoning' her children

Olivia Wilde has hit back at assumptions she's abandoned her children.

The actor and filmmaker has been through a highly-publicised break up with Jason Sudeikis, with whom she has two children, but she has insisted they remain as big a part of her life as ever.

The 38-year-old reckons the misguided assumption stems from outsiders misinterpreting her desire to shelter her children from the spotlight.

"I share custody of my kids with my ex," she told Elle. "If I'm photographed not with my kids, people assume I have abandoned them, like my kids are just somewhere in a hot car without me.

"The suggestion is that I have abandoned my role as a mother.

"You know why you don't see me with my kids? Because I don't let them get photographed. Do you know the lengths that I go to to protect my kids from being seen by you?"

Unfortunately for Wilde, her children were catapulted into the centre of a huge story in the press and on social media, after she was served custody papers on stage while promoting her thriller Don't Worry Darling at CinemaCon in April.

In a subsequent interview, she described it as a 'vicious attack'.

Speaking to Variety, she said: "It was my workplace. In any other workplace, it would be seen as an attack. It was really upsetting. It shouldn't have been able to happen. There was a huge breach in security, which is really scary.

"The hurdles that you had to jump through to get into that room with several badges, plus special Covid tests that had to be taken days in advance, which gave you wristbands that were necessary to gain access to the event – this was something that required forethought."

Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

She added: "I hated that this nastiness distracted from the work of so many different people and the studio that I was up there representing.

"To try to sabotage that was really vicious. But I had a job to do; I'm not easily distracted.

"But, you know, sadly, it was not something that was entirely surprising to me. I mean, there's a reason I left that relationship."

Wilde and Sudeikis were together from 2011 until late 2020 and are parents of eight-year-old son Otis and daughter Daisy, five.

Sudeikis subsequently denied that he had any knowledge of how and when the papers would be delivered.

The 48-year-old's spokesperson went on to claim the actor would 'never condone her being served in such an inappropriate manner'.

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Topics: Celebrity, Parenting, Film and TV

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey