In 'Drinking Buddies,' Olivia Wilde goes sans script

• The actress plays a brewery manager in a charged at-work relationship in the rom-com
• The reliance on improvisation changed the way Wilde works
• First released on VOD%2C %27Drinking Buddies%27 hits theaters Friday

Talk about pressure.

When Olivia Wilde signed up for Drinking Buddies, a sudsy spin on '70s rom-coms like Bob & Carol & Ted and Alice and The Heartbreak Kid, she knew director Joe Swanberg was basing his script on improvisation. But a script based on bullet points? The experience, she says, turned her acting chops on their head.

"The whole process changed the way I act," says Wilde, who arrived on set in Chicago and began touring the local craft beer scene for two weeks in preparation for the role. In Drinking Buddies, she plays Kate, a brewery manager mired in sloppy life choices, whose charged at-work relationship with Luke (New Girl's Jake Johnson) begins to compromise their outside relationships.

"There are certain scenes I swear I don't remember shooting. Not because we were drinking too much beer -- that was clearly part of it," she says with a laugh. "But because it was improvised it almost flows so much from your subconscious that you don't have time to judge what you're saying or doing."

The cast says the improv-intensive set reminded them of early acting classes -- just on a more imposing level. "The actors all got a two-page bullet-pointed list of scenes," says Swanberg. "That was the script. It's not meant to be an intimidating process, but I think it can be scary. On a day-to-day basis it's a fun, loose atmosphere. I'm encouraging them to bring a lot of themselves to it. Most of Olivia's great moments in the movie are hers."

Swanberg says he knew Wilde would be a perfect fit for a role that requires a large sense of self. "It's instantly clear that she's passionate about a lot of causes, she reads a lot, she's engaged with the world," he says.

Ron Livingston, who plays Kate's straitlaced beau whose eye wanders to Luke's longtime love (Anna Kendrick), says audiences will see a new side of Wilde. "I think people are really going to get to know her in a way that she hasn't been allowed to show herself," he says.

The indie jumps on a distribution model championed by indies like Bachelorette, Arbitrage and Lovelace. It launched on July 25 with a VOD release and moves into theaters this Friday. Wilde says she's embracing the new approach. "We have to get rid of our snobbish dismissal of VOD," she says, pointing to art-house cinema in crisis and VOD as a means to access smaller films nationwide.

"I personally think it's more fun to see it in a movie theater with a group of people, with a beer," says Wilde, who next stars in Ron Howard's studio-size Formula 1 drama, Rush. "I think there's something about the collective experience of the theatrical viewing that just stops you from being distracted. It keeps everyone in this connected tension that's really great for listening. But I believe in this new model. I think it only allows for new options."