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You mentioned #MeToo as the motivation for changing up the characters. Is that something you had to completely rewrite, or did you just flip the genders in the script?
I flipped the genders, and then I rewrote. I Want Your Sex is very different from where I started. There are things that are the same, but the mansion [sequence] and the body in the pool—all the film noir stuff—was not in the original script. The whole third act was completely different. It’s been this long process of so much stuff changing the movie, particularly in the last year or two of writing, when articles started coming out—that are discussed in the movie—about the fact that 40 percent of Gen Z hasn’t had sex in a year, the reaction to that and that conversation between generations.
Was Karley Sciortino, who is credited as a co-writer, writing the script with you from the beginning, in its original form?
Not really. I have a thing where I usually just take a script, and there’s something in it—like a germ that I like—and then I go off and change stuff. It’s hard for me to sit with a person who wrote the script and be like, “I don’t like this,” or “I’m throwing this whole part away,” or “This whole character doesn’t make sense.” This was [Karley’s] spec script from 2012—before White Bird in a Blizzard, because I made that movie after [reading it].
When you were rewriting it, and the genders had been flipped, did you know early on that you wanted Olivia Wilde? I would assume Cooper Hoffman came later, since he wasn’t acting at that time.
It’s all a very organic process. I flipped the genders, and Erika Tracy was born—this larger-than-life sex superhero who’s powerful, charismatic, creative and passionate but also crazy and doing inappropriate things. It was just a super fun character to write. So many of the things she says were literally things that I’ve said in interviews, because I relate to her a lot, and she is my mouthpiece in a lot of ways. My work is also about sex and sexuality. My work has also been very controversial through the years.
There’s a lot of common ground between Erika Tracy and me. I mean, I don’t fuck my interns. [Laughs] But a lot of her views on sex, sexuality, and art are very much my views. There was a lot of mind-melding going on, and she speaks for me a lot. Like, when she says that thing to Cooper about, “Your generation is all about FOMO, but you don’t care that you’re missing out on the sexual prime of your life.” You’re going to be fucking 50 years old one day. Are you gonna go, “Why was I not fucking people when I was 25 and gorgeous? Now, I’m fucking 50.” [Laughs] You know what I mean? Hopefully [you’re] still gorgeous at 50.
My manager slipped the script to Olivia Wilde’s agent without telling me. It was at the last minute that she said, “Olivia Wilde read it and really wants to meet.” And I said, “Olivia Wilde? What?” I hadn’t even thought of Olivia. It’s not like we made a bunch of lists and had all these actors on them. Then I said, “Oh, that’s a fucking really great idea.”
I’ve been a fan of hers forever, since she was in The O.C. playing a bisexual kid. She’s always been edgy and cool to me. Olivia is like an old-time ’40s movie star. She has that crazy bone structure and so much presence. She’s like Greta Garbo or something—a movie star of a different era. I feel like that’s why Hollywood didn’t know what to do with her. She was always the wife or the girlfriend, which is why she started directing. But I think she responded to Erika because it’s such a juicy part. There’s so much for her to do. We met, and she was amazing, so fearless and ready to just go for it. We attached her, and two days later the movie was financed. It happened so quickly!
