This past
Saturday, more than 60,000 people gathered on the Great Lawn of NYC’s
Central Park for the Global Citizen Festival, a free-ticketed concert
designed to inspire activism around last week’s United Nations General
Assembly talks on ending extreme poverty worldwide. The five-hour
extravaganza featured performances from The Black Keys, Band of Horses,
Foo Fighters, K’Naan, and Neil Young, as well as a surprise act from
John Legend. It was produced by a number of foundations and non-profit
organizations that were well represented by the festival’s star-studded
host committee: Katie Couric, Selena Gomez, Sophia Bush, Katharine
McPhee, and Olivia Wilde.
ELLE.com caught up with Wilde during the show to talk rock 'n' roll and
raising awareness for Half the Sky, a documentary premiering
tonight in which Wilde, along with Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, and
Eva Mendes, advocate for action against the oppression of women
worldwide.
ELLE: This has been an amazing lineup. Which bands were you most
excited to see?
Olivia Wilde: Oh man, I don’t know! Everyone was so incredible to
see live, and both the Foo Fighters and The Black Keys are favorites of
mine. If I could play drums like Patrick Carney or Taylor Hawkins, I’d
be a really happy person. I practice—I practice hard. My boyfriend and I
have a really badass electric drum kit in our apartment, so I put on
those headphones and wail away. But I’m not really close to rock 'n'
roll yet!
ELLE: Well, it sounds like you’re on the right track! Aside from the
music, you’re here to support Half the Sky—can you talk about what drew
you to the project?
OW: I was a really big fan of the original book and a big fan of [director]
Nicholas Kristof. So I think word got around that I was already a
supporter, and when they were putting the documentary together, they
reached out to me to see if I wanted to participate. I said yes
immediately, and then we filmed for about two weeks on site in Kenya and
in Nairobi. It was a dream come true. I’m so proud of the result. All
the actresses and women who did the various segments have really
interesting things to say, and they all show different types of
responses to what they find in Vietnam, in Somaliland, in Sierra Leone,
and so on.
ELLE: In addition to your work for Half the Sky, we know you’ve
recently collaborated with Alternative Apparel, a sponsor for this event.
OW: Yes; it's an incredible company that values making conscious
decisions on the business end. It's been tremendously helpful with this
festival—they donated all the official merchandise. It's amazing. When
my partner, Barbara Burchfield, and I decided that we wanted to create a
produce for a purpose, something that really defined our passion for
conscious commerce, Alternative Apparel jumped on board and was so
enthusiastic. We ended up making this bag, and a big portion of the
proceeds go to Haiti.
ELLE: What in particular motivated you to get involved with the
relief efforts there?
OW: I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in
2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists
for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted,
the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and
within days, the earthquake happened. I knew at that moment that Haiti
would be a part of my life forever. It was already a really dangerous
place; it was already fully impoverished, with people living on less
than $1 a day. And the earthquake made it worse. The global community
has been incredible, but we can’t let people forget.
ELLE: Do you plan to continue to designing and creating more products?
OW: Yeah, I would like to. I’m still a student of fashion, but I like
hooking up with the people that really know how to make cool clothes.
And hopefully, we can make more cool clothes with a purpose.
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