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Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex Casts Olivia Wilde as a Provocative Artist

Araki reversed the artist-assistant genders after #MeToo to reframe power dynamics while positioning the film to prompt debate about sex and generational attitudes.

Overview

  • Olivia Wilde stars as Erika Tracy, an erotically charged artist whose persona blends provocative art references with narcissistic bravado.
  • Cooper Hoffman plays Elliot, the younger assistant who becomes the focus of a complicated Dom/sub relationship that the film treats as both comic and unsettling.
  • Araki says Erika functions as a quasi-autobiographical mouthpiece and that many of her lines reflect things he has said in interviews.
  • The director swapped the original male-artist/female-assistant roles after #MeToo to avoid reproducing images of women being demeaned and to shift audience perspective on power and desire.
  • I Want Your Sex opens in theaters on July 31, 2026 from Magnolia Pictures and Araki’s longer interview will appear later this summer on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.