'This Creature': Olivia Wilde Slams Elon Musk Over 'Incel' Misogyny

Olivia Wilde has accused Elon Musk of embodying a strain of 'incel' misogyny and said she now 'deeply resents' the tech billionaire, recalling a meeting with him at SpaceX's Los Angeles headquarters years before his high-profile political turn.

In a fresh interview on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Wilde reflects on how men in positions of power shape culture and politics, and how that thinking threads through her recent work.

The actor and director has been promoting her new film The Invite while revisiting the controversies and debates around her 2022 psychological thriller Don't Worry Darling, which she says was partly fueled by concerns about misogynistic ideology bleeding into mainstream life and electoral politics.

Elon Musk, Misogyny and a Soured First Impression

Wilde told Theroux she met Musk 'many, many years ago,' when SpaceX had just set up its base in Los Angeles. At the time, she said, she was involved with an organisation in Haiti that was building hospitals and schools, and Musk had expressed interest in supporting it financially.

'I got to go on a tour because I wanted to see the rocket ships,' she recalled. Musk, she said, was 'interested in donating money to an organisation that I was a part of in Haiti that was building hospitals and schools.' According to Wilde, 'he was quite interested in donating money, and, I believe he did donate a little bit of money, and that's appreciated.'

Even then, she admitted, she found him puzzling. 'I was kind of confused by him,' she said. 'I never would've predicted that he would go the path that he's gone now because he did seem really smart.'

Since that brief encounter, Wilde suggested, her view has shifted dramatically as Musk's public persona has hardened and his views have become more visible. Without spelling out specific posts or actions, she criticised what she sees as a worldview that treats human relationships and even birth rates like engineering problems to be solved by a self-appointed elite.

The filmmaker directly linked Musk's rhetoric about an 'underpopulation crisis' to a broader pattern of male power fantasies. She placed him among men who believe they are 'more powerful than nature,' and said that belief is, in her view, inseparable from deep-rooted misogyny.

Wilde described Musk as having 'turned into this creature,' adding bluntly: 'I really resent him now, I really deeply resent him.'

Nothing in the interview suggested a recent private clash between the pair; rather, it was the direction of Musk's public stances and political alliances that appears to have crystallised her anger. Musk has not, as of publication, publicly responded to Wilde's remarks, and his representatives were not quoted in the podcast segment referenced. In the absence of his side of the story, her account remains exactly that: a strongly worded personal assessment grounded in her own brief interaction and years of watching his rise.

From Jordan Peterson to 'Incel' Culture: How Elon Musk Fits the Picture

Much of the conversation with Theroux revolved not around Musk alone, but around what Wilde considers a resurgent misogynistic culture online and off. Looking back at Don't Worry Darling, she said conservative commentator Jordan Peterson helped inspire Chris Pine's slick, cult-like character in the film.

Wilde admitted it might have been 'unfair' to label Peterson a 'pseudo-intellectual,' but said she was 'disturbed by what I saw as this kind of misogynistic philosophy that was being obviously weaponised in a way that was leading us to elect Trump twice.' The reference to two Trump election victories reflects how she sees that style of rhetoric as part of a longer political arc, even if the electoral maths is contestable and highly partisan.

In her telling, Musk's fixation on population decline sits in the same ecosystem as those ideas: men presenting themselves as the rational stewards of civilisation, while women's bodies and choices become a sort of policy lever. It is a harsh reading, one that many of Musk's admirers would reject, but it is clearly the lens through which Wilde is now looking at him.

That theme carries through into The Invite, the new comedy-drama she discussed in detail. The film pokes at expectations of desire and entitlement inside a marriage, and Wilde pointed to one scene between her and co-star Seth Rogen, who plays her husband.

'He says, 'You're supposed to want me.' And it's very sad, and I think that people are familiar with that feeling. You're supposed to want me. You married me, and that makes me feel entitled to you being attracted to me,' Wilde said. 'I mean, woah, does that veer into the manosphere incel conversation.'

For Wilde, the moral line is clear enough. 'You are entitled to the love of your parents, I do believe that,' she added. Children, in her view, should never have to earn affection. 'However, that is a familial thing, it is not something that should exist between couples.'

Her remarks knit together tech power, online subcultures and private intimacy in a way that is bound to provoke argument. To her, Musk is no longer just a rocket-building eccentric but part of a wider story about how some men talk about women, relationships and the future of humanity itself. Nothing she said in the interview has been independently corroborated beyond her own account.

Still, as she promotes The Invite and Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex, which stars Wilde and opens on 31 July, it is clear she has little interest in politely sidestepping Musk, Peterson or the 'manosphere.' She is, for better or worse, choosing to name them.