Olivia Wilde sparked a memorable moment with Penélope Cruz after bringing up rumors about a supposed swingers scene in Hollywood.
The two actors appeared together in Allure’s “Truth Serum” feature, a confessional interview format that often pushes celebrities into awkward, funny and unexpectedly candid territory. The timing also tied into the current buzz around their new film, The Invite, which has already drawn attention for its dinner-party premise and sexually charged storyline.
In the clip released on Thursday, July 2, Cruz sat down with her The Invite co-star to talk about the film, but the conversation quickly shifted to a much more unexpected topic.
Wilde asked Cruz what she knew about long-running speculation surrounding an alleged swingers community in Hollywood.
“What the f*** do I know?” Cruz was quick to reply. “I mean, all I do is school, football, dance, work, kids, work — that’s my life.”
After the pair laughed, Wilde kept the conversation going with another question.
“It doesn’t have to be you, but are swingers a real thing?”
Cruz said she had never been brought into that world and made clear she was out of the loop.
“If they exist, they don’t tell me about it. I mean, I don’t know stories about that, but if you know, you better tell me because I like knowing everything. And I don’t repeat it. I wouldn’t shared that information, but I would like to know.”
Wilde then said she had heard one specific story and leaned over to quietly tell Cruz the names involved.
Cruz reacted with an audible gasp before making a joke about how public the exchange really was.
“You have a microphone there, you have another one here.”
Wilde clarified that she had never witnessed anything herself, adding that rumor and gossip in Hollywood can easily spiral beyond the truth.
Cruz suggested they should spend some time trying to find out whether any of the speculation holds up.
‘invest some of our time’
Wilde seemed fully on board with the idea.
“Okay, I’m open to that,” Wilde said. “I like that mission.”
The clip arrived shortly after Wilde made a separate round of headlines for discussing beauty standards in entertainment and the pressure on women to alter their appearance. On The Run-Through with Vogue podcast, she said many cosmetic procedures feel extreme and argued that the culture around them is unlikely to fade anytime soon.
“There’s something so medieval about a lot of these things,” she explained, before noting that people have also criticized her own face in relation to whether she has avoided those treatments.
She went on to reflect on the impossible standard women are often held to in Hollywood and beyond.
“I’ve had the thing of people being like, ‘She looks old and dead and awful.’ And you’re like, ‘Fuck! How do you win? It’s impossible.’”
Meanwhile, The Invite is generating its own conversation as it heads into wide release. The film centers on a couple whose dinner with their neighbors takes a surprisingly provocative turn, with Cruz and Edward Norton playing the mysterious upstairs pair at the center of the story.