Olivia Wilde defends controversial 'Richard Jewell' role with lengthy Twitter post

Olivia Wilde has posted a series of messages on Twitter defending her role as journalist Kathy Scruggs in Clint Eastwood’s increasingly controversial biopic Richard Jewell.

The drama heavily implies that Scruggs, who died in 2001, tried to trade sex with Jon Hamm’s FBI agent for information on the titular character.

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This has been heavily disputed and criticised by the media, and while Wilde previously tried to defend Richard Jewell, she took to Twitter on Thursday night to fully explain her stance.

“Contrary to a swath of recent headlines, I do not believe that Kathy ‘traded sex for tips’. Nothing in my research suggested she did so, and it was never my intention to suggest she had. That would be an appalling and misogynistic dismissal of the difficult work she did.”

“The perspective of the fictional dramatization of the story, as I understood it, was that Kathy, and the FBI agent who leaked false information to her, were in a pre-existing romantic relationship, not a transactional exchange of sex for information.”

“I cannot speak for the creative decisions made by the filmmakers, as I did not have a say in how the film was ultimately crafted, but it’s important to me that I share my personal take on the matter.”

Read More: Olivia Wilde defends 'Richard Jewell' over scene where journalist offers sex for information

Wilde also insisted that any previous comments she made about “female sexuality” had been lost in translation during her interviews, before explaining how she had conducted her own research on Scruggs that may “differ from others involved with the film.”

Richard Jewell, which is directed by Clint Eastwood and sees Paul Walter Hauser play the titular character, who found a bomb at the 1996 Olympics only to be falsely accused of planting it himself, will be released in the UK on January 31, 2020.