While best known for his big-screen comedies, Owen Wilson is currently teeing off on the 2025 TV schedule for Apple TV+’s golf-centric comedy Stick. If only the actor’s wildly meme-friendly exclamation was “Fore!” instead of “Wow!” this show could have been a major jackpot. But it’s indeed his gee-golly expression of awe that’s gained its own mini-fandom around the globe, sparking supercut compilation videos and unique tributes made in Wilson’s honor over the years. But how does he feel about it all?
Considering the Wedding Crashers star has so rarely talked about it publicly that there’s even room to wonder how he feels, one might think Wilson is self-conscious or dismissive of all the attention those three letters have brought him. But when he popped by Pardon My Take to talk about his new show, he was all smiles when asked about being so heavily attached to the word “wow” during his career. Surprising as it may be, he was late to catch on, saying:
First of all, I wasn’t aware of it until it was already sort of an internet thing. And then I remember the first person kind of showing, and they were a bit tentative because they were sort of [like] ‘How would I react?’ Yeah, I didn’t realize, obviously, that I was saying it. And now, I definitely am a lot more careful.
I can 100% empathize with the person referenced who was among the first to blatantly point out to Owen Wilson that he’d become a member of meme royalty over such a seemingly innocuous word. It’s like asking someone if they realize they’ve just spent an entire afternoon in public with chocolate smeared around their mouth. Maybe they did, and it was all in good fun, or maybe not.
In any case, one might be confident to think that Wilson reversed course in perhaps too swift a manner, seeing as how the number of “wow” examples in his movies and TV appearances essentially dropped to ZERO after 2017, with Father Figure marking one of the final iterations. Wilson even poked fun at himself over it on Loki with his character Mobius.
Still, even if he’s wary about what words he’s using to ad-lib scenes, Wilson doesn’t sound scornful about being known as the king of “Wows,” and can appreciate how much worse it could be. As he put it:
But if I did have to pick a word, that’s not a bad word to be associated with.
If nothing else, it’s a slightly less NSFW fan interaction to have someone say “Wow!” at you, as opposed to the fan comments that Kaitlin Olson has dealt with.
According to Owen Wilson, there are times where he’ll still be asked to throw a “wow” into a project, and he finds ways to not appease such requests, saying:
They’ll have it sometimes when I’m doing like a voice over or some animated thing, but I’ve changed it from that into ‘Whoa.’
I don’t think it’s too far outside the realm of possibilities that Owen Wilson’s meme-ability could achieve a second lifespan if he suddenly started saying “Whoa!” dozens of times in Stick and other projects over the next few years, Joey-from-Blossom-style.
Currently four episodes into its first season, which is available to stream with an Apple TV+ subscription, Stick is the creation of Jason Keller, and follows Owen’s Pryce Cahill, a former pro golfer making ends meet as a coach. After meeting a promising young prodigy named Santi (Peter Dager), Pryce believes training the athlete can be his ticket back to a better life. Having debuted during the first week of June, Stick drops new episodes on Wednesdays.
