Remember the Oscar slap you heard around the world last month? Now we have the rendering of “Watch Around the World: Olivia Wilde, on stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, is slapped, so to speak, by a processing server while talking about her latest movie.”
A woman, who has not yet been identified but who wears a mask and a CinemaCon credential, handed Wilde an envelope from Manila marked “Personal and Confidential,” which contained what turned out to be legal papers relating to custody of her two children with “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudeikis.
Rather than setting the envelope aside, the actress/director opened it up to thousands of audiences at CinemaCon, an annual conference where Hollywood gives previews of upcoming attractions to movie theater owners.
She said, “Right, I understand.” She then went on to show the trailer for her new movie, Don’t Worry Baby, which hits theaters on September 23. The film stars Harry Styles, with whom she has been photographed over the past year, prompting speculation that the two are a married couple.
Previously: Olivia Wilde filed custody papers over the children with Jason Sudeikis while on stage at CinemaCon
Yikes. First, who knew there was a problem between Wilde, 38, and Sudeikis, 46, over custody of their children? It’s not like they’re known in Hollywood by other ex-couples like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who have been courting each other for years over their kids.
Second, the due process service is a necessary component of the legal system rooted in the constitutional rights to due process. But why was it necessary to serve Wild Ho This is amazing fashion? How good was this for the image of Sudeikis and his attorney, for the image processing servers or for CinemaCon’s seemingly incomplete security measures?
If the plan is to take advantage of an earlier and better position for the Sudeikis in a legal battle over, say, where the children will live, well, how is that done under the mantle of sympathy that Wilde is enveloped in, at least on social media?
says Leslie Barbara, head of marriage at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron in New York, who has 30 years of experience handling divorces of the rich and famous. “I couldn’t think of a worse way to handle the service.”
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On the other hand, Barbara says, this is not unprecedented. She said one of her partners was aware of a case in which the bride obtained legal papers at her wedding. ouch.
Sudeikis and Wilde, who were engaged for seven years before their split in November 2020, share son Otis, 8, and daughter Daisy, 5.
On Wednesday, Sudeikis announced that He was unaware of when or where the papers were to be delivered to Wilde and that he would never agree to serve her in this manner.
If true, Barbara says, “There was clearly an unacceptable break in communication between (Sudekis and his attorney). Something went wrong. Why should he be in the middle of her presentation? Can’t wait for the stage to come down? That was unnecessary.” Absolutely “.
Ideally, in civil proceedings, attorneys and clients are supposed to be in close contact about matters such as how to file papers, says Barbara. “It is not appropriate for someone to jump out of the bush, we prefer to do it in a civilized way,” she says.
But sometimes that’s not possible, particularly when it comes to serving celebrities, who may resist receiving legal documents as much as regular researchers but have more resources to avoid it, says Jelena Kwiatkowski, president of the National Association of Professional Operations Servers, who has a process Serving business in Buffalo, New York
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Details of the rules may vary from state to state (in New York, for example, you can’t serve on Sundays, says Barbara), but one rule everywhere is that process servers can’t impersonate a cop to serve papers, Kwiatkowski says.
She also says that the service should be personal and on hand. But it’s hard to get close enough to listeners for service, she says, so all is fair in love, war, and service. Remember, as you say, we don’t know what caused the process server to do it this way.
“I suppose that wasn’t the way[the server]did it in the beginning, and maybe she tried to get close early and couldn’t and that was the way she found that she could get to[Wild]in a personal way,” says Kwiatkowski. “I’ve heard of servers that will reserve signatures, buy and queue, when dealing with people in the public eye. Sometimes you have to be witty, it’s the name of the game” in the submission process.
“You can run but you can’t hide,” she says. He also found out Prince Andrew last year when he tried to avoid being presented in a US sexual assault lawsuit at his residence at the Royal Lodge behind the gates of Windsor Castle. (The papers were left at his house by an English processing servant and an English court declared the service appropriate.)
However, Kwiatkowski adds, this method won’t be her first attempt to serve anyone. Process servers for years lamented their image in popular culture as a joke; Now this episode will add to the wrong impressions.
“It’s a profession and most people don’t realize we’re doing due process” by notifying people who are being sued, she says. “It’s kind of a joke and it really isn’t… It’s a bit sad that people don’t understand how important it is.”
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And what about CinemaCon’s role in all of this? How did the process server obtain credentials? So far, no one has touched on that, but The Hollywood Reporter says officials plan to take a closer look at the conference’s security protocols.
Thursday’s WrapUp podcast interviewed John Fethian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, who said officials still don’t know who the server is or how she became a registered attendee at the show.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said on the podcast, noting that it had never happened before in the show’s 30-year history. “So we’ve reevaluated our protocols, and we’ve really changed here at the show. Now I’ve got security at the front of the stage.”
It’s too late for Wilde.
Contributing: Patrick Ryan and Charles Tribani, USA TODAY
Related: Why is everyone talking about Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles?
