Showing the kids how it’s done. Jason Sudeikis said he and Olivia Wilde hope that they’re showing their children to choose a career that they love.
While at the Ted Lasso season 3 premiere in Los Angeles, the Horrible Bosses actor, 47, revealed that his children don’t necessarily grasp how hard he works, but they know he has fun doing what he loves.
“They know [Ted Lasso cocreators] Brendan [Hunt] and Joe [Kelly] real well, and so they see how much we hang out, and laugh and enjoy each other’s company,” Sudeikis told Entertainment Tonight on Tuesday, March 7. “May any of us get the opportunity to find a job where you have so much fun doing it. And if that’s the example that myself and Olivia, provide for them, then I’m happy about that. It doesn’t have to be in this business necessarily … Daisy wants to be about 10 different things.”
The SNL alum and Wilde, 38, share children, Otis, 8, and Daisy, 6. Us Weekly confirmed in November 2020 that the actors — who were engaged but never tied the knot — called it quits after nearly a decade together. Their fight for custody of the kids got messy. After the Don’t Worry Darling director was publicly served with legal documents while on stage during a presentation at CinemaCon in April 2022.
“It was my workplace,” the House alum told Variety in August 2022. “In any other workplace, it would be seen as an attack. It was really upsetting. It shouldn’t have been able to happen. There was a huge breach in security, which is really scary. … I hated that this nastiness distracted from the work of so many different people and the studio that I was up there representing. To try to sabotage that was really vicious. But I had a job to do; I’m not easily distracted. But, you know, sadly, it was not something that was entirely surprising to me. I mean, there’s a reason I left that relationship.”
Sudeikis clarified in his legal response amid the custody battle that he didn’t intend for Wilde to be served at the event. “Olivia’s talk was an important event for Olivia, both professionally and personally, and I am very, very sorry that the incident marred her special moment,” he wrote in court paperwork obtained by Us, noting that he didn’t want the documents to be delivered at their kids’ school or at the home of Wilde’s then-boyfriend, Harry Styles, in case their children “might be present.”
Despite the back and forth, the exes were spotted hugging in January, hinting that they’d smoothed over their legal battle for the children.
Sudekis’ kids enjoy watching their dad’s Apple TV+ show, in which he plays an American football coach brought in to coach a British soccer team.
The Virginia native revealed being a father helped him portray Ted Lasso. The soccer coach is a recently-separated parent, and Sudeikis believes having children of his own helped him deliver his Emmy-winning performance.
“I don’t think I ever could have portrayed a parent — me personally, effectively, in a way that I would have believed — until becoming one,” he explained to ET. “I don’t think I’m a good enough actor to do that kind of make-believe without having that kind of love that enters your life when you have kids.”
