The XX Factor

Jason Sudeikis’ Pickup Line Worked on Olivia Wilde. Was It Creepy or Cute?

Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis at the Oscars in Hollywood on Feb. 28.

Frederic J.Brown/AFP/Getty Images

On Tuesday’s Howard Stern Show, Olivia Wilde recounted her first meeting with her now-fiancé Jason Sudeikis. Turns out, celebrities are just like us: They say weird things when they try to talk to attractive strangers. Wilde recalled:

I remember I was on the dance floor [at an SNL afterparty] and everybody was dancing around me and they just seemed really happy and I was just kinda standing there. … He came up to me and said, “You know, whatever you’re looking for, you don’t need it,” and he just walked away. … He played it really cool.

“Whatever you’re looking for, you don’t need it” sounds like the kind of rehearsed refrain a pickup artist might employ, complete with an immediate escape to avoid having to answer to responses like “Wait, what?” or “I’m looking for the bathroom, and yes, I really do.” Wilde wasn’t looking for anything; she was just standing there. Even if she were searching the floor for a lost contact lens or surveying the room for a cute dude, she wouldn’t have needed someone to step in and adjudicate the necessity of her search.

A more generous interpretation of Sudeikis’ line is: “You’re perfect just the way you are.” But the line is so wrought with condescension—he straight-up ghosted before she could even respond to his evaluation of her needs—it’s hard to give it the benefit of the doubt. And at any rate, an out-of-the-blue “You’re perfect just the way you are” implies a self-dissatisfaction that’s impossible to predict and rude to point out in a stranger. “You’re probably trying to change or improve yourself because you think there’s something wrong with you. You don’t need to!”

Slate’s personnel are divided on whether Sudeikis’ pickup attempt was creepy, just plain clumsy, or a halfway decent crack at flirtation—Wilde seems to have liked it, after all, which means Sudeikis did right by his mark. Bro Internet is split on the issue, too. In one sense, there’s no “good” pickup line: Flirting with strangers means imposing yourself on their space and time, with no indication of their dispositions or dislikes. That makes for a very fine line between skeevy and sweet. There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to romance, but telling a woman what she does or does not need is not a promising start.