Olivia Wilde has addressed her silence surrounding rumours about friction on the set of her 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling.
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The drama, directed by Wilde, starred Florence Pugh and Harry Styles (whom Wilde dated for a brief period). The film’s press tour was overshadowed by rumours of friction between Pugh and Wilde over the latter’s availability, resulting in an alleged argument between the pair.
In a new interview with The Cut, Wilde denies that was ever the case. “I have never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set. I wanted to be like, ‘None of this is true,’” she said.
However, she claimed her lack of denial about the stories was due to studio pressure. “I was told, ‘Don’t say a fucking word. Just go out there and smile.’ I resent that, but it taught me it’s not the way I want to handle things.”
Elsewhere in the interview, she said Jennifer Garner, who she worked with on a 2011 film called Butter, gave her advice about being categorised as a woman in the film industry. “She said it’s like you get cast in a soap opera by the public,” Wilde recalled. “And they assign you an obvious archetype: the damsel in distress, the good girl, the pretty girl…. I became the full-on villain. Like Cruella.”
Further headlines emerged during the movie’s Venice premiere, when it appeared as if Styles spat on co-star Chris Pine in a video that circulated online. A year later, Pine confirmed that it wasn’t the case, calling the singer and actor “a very, very kind guy”.
Recently, Olivia Wilde recalled her relationship with Harry Styles as “wholesome and sweet” despite the “parasocial” backlash online. “It’s almost like [our] happiness made them mad,” she said on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “Like, I would go to his shows and dance, and people were like, ‘Oh, how could she?’”